Whirpools Underneath the Leaves
by Alexeij
Summary: Hashirama married into his own Clan, the Mokuton passed down to his children and the Senju didn't go extinct in a couple generations. Later, when Uzu is razed, the Uzumaki survive thanks to Tobirama. From there on, the butterflies get to work in their subtle and not-so-subtle ways. Fair warning: no wanking, no bashing. Also, exploring new scenarios. ON HIATUS
1. Chapter 1

_AN: Longish AN at the bottom. For now, because it confused me greatly at the time_ _Sannin = Member of the Dentetsu no Sannin; Sennin = Sage._

 _Enjoy!_

* * *

At almost four years of age, the Uzumaki Compound was the only world Naruto ever knew. It was big, full of laughter and the brushing of ink on paper and redheads walking the cobbled streets; and yet, behind the trees and the banners of the whirlpools everywhere, behind the soft tapping of bamboo and trickling water, Naruto could glimpse the walls between the Compound and the Outside world he knew was there, but had never seen.

Konoha.

What Naruto did see, and how could he not, were the sentinel trees of the Senju, tall above the walls of the Compound, always green and shimmering with morning dew even in the cold of winter. That night, kaasan told him during story-time that the Shodai Hokage grew them when Konoha was founded all those years ago, and when Naruto asked how could the Hokage grow trees so big and tall all by himself, kaasan smiled.

"The Shodai was a great shinobi, Naruto-kun."

"Like you and Ibiki-oji, kaasan?"

Kaasan's chuckle was warm, but not really a laugh. Naruto only rarely saw kaasan laugh. "Much, much stronger than Ibiki and me, Naruto-kun. The Hokage is always the strongest shinobi in the Village, so he can protect everyone in it..." Naruto gave her a disbelieving look: Ibiki-oji was big like a bear, and there's nobody stronger than kaasan! But she was speaking again. "... and the Shodai was a Senju." Her smile slipped for a moment, but Naruto was in awe and starry eyed and he didn't notice. "What do I always tell you about the Senju?"

"That the Uzumaki Clan owes them lots. To the Nidaime Hokage too," Naruto answered dutifully, and squirmed a little when kaasan ruffled his red hair and kissed him on the brow goodnight.

"We owe them everything, Naruto-kun," kaasan said, and Naruto thought he heard something sad in her voice. Then she smiled down at him again, flicked him on forehead, and he forgot about it.

Kaasan was standing on the door when Naruto piped up again from his bed. "Can I be a shinobi too, kaasan? Like the Shodai and you?"

She smiled at him, and in the dim light of the corridor her hair shone a deep, dark red. "You can be anything you want, Naruto-kun. Sleep well now."

The door closed, and shortly after Naruto's dreams were filled with towering trees, swirling chains and whispering leaves in a cold, autumn night.

* * *

When Naruto woke next it was to the starry sky outside his window, and his bladder aching tellingly. He scampered out of bed and rushed to the bathroom down the corridor, feeling proud and accomplished for waking up in time. When he came out, Momoko-chan waved and smiled at him from her armchair, and he paddled down the stairs to her.

Momoko-chan was a friend of kaasan and Naruto's favourite babysitter when kaasan had grown-up things to do. After they swore each other to super-secrecy from the wrath of kaasan, she poured him a cup of her sweet tea and went back to read from a scroll, her brows knitted in concentration. Naruto tried to peek, rising to his tiptoes, but his eyes were already drooping and all he made out were symbols and lines that made no sense to him. He was already fast asleep when Momoko-chan tucked him into bed again.

* * *

A crash downstairs and a strong impact on his window wrenched Naruto away from dreamland, and the first thing he saw was his room glowing a deep blue glow shrouding every inch of it. Momoko-chan was the second as she appeared from thin air, leaning against the door, pale and panting and holding one hand against her tummy to staunch the flow of... blood...

"Naruto!" she gasped, and her voice was harder and at the same time weaker than he ever heard her. "Under the bed! Quick!"

Another thud on his window, and the blue barrier rippled. Naruto's head whipped around and his eyes widened at the man figure that _stood_ outside his window, clad all in black and with a blank mask covering his face, and thrust a sparkling sword at the glass.

Naruto yelped and fell back, then toppled onto the ground with a wince. Momoko-chan fell on all fours, tracing lines on the wood of the floor with her finger covered in her own blood. There was so much of it, slowly widening under her...

Naruto crawled to her, but the look on her face stopped him cold. The same look turned into something else in a single moment, something scared and angry, sad and determined. Naruto felt her arms wrap around him, her weight press him down and rob his lungs of air, her heartbeat against his ear and words he couldn't comprehend. Something warm drenched his pyjamas, then a flash, the whole room trembled and the world shattered.

* * *

Kushina Uzumaki, clad in full shinobi battle kit, emerged from her _Shunshin_ to the sight of her parents' home reduced to a smoldering wreck torn open by an explosion and belching thick plumes of smoke; Uzumaki Clan shinobis and the Military Police were cordoning the area off from passers-by and the nosy, while medic nins gaggled around a spot in her backyard, which she could see _through_ what remained of her home.

She stood still for less than a heartbeat, taking everything in and raging inside at why was she the last one to be told, before she rushed forward into another _Shunshin_ and stopped at the edge of the perimeter set up by the MP.

"Uzumaki-san," a spindle, black-haired Uchiha warned, trying and stop her with a gesture and an ink-black glare. "This area is off limits by orders of Hokage-sama and Uzumaki Goro -"

" _Out of my way!_ " she hissed. Killing intent hit the chunin like a sledgehammer, turning his knees to rubber. He took a trembling step back, sweat breaking off his unblemished brow, but Kushina was already moving past him.

The next Chunin to bar her way, a clan member this time around, did so only to point her way to the direction of the forward command centre established in the next house over, telling her she was being expected by Goro Uzumaki, the Clan Head.

She grabbed him by the scruff of his flak jacket and heaved him up and closer with such speed and strength the Chunin could only stare and gulp, though chakra chains were quick to form and wrap around his arms and torso, for all the protection they would offer.

"Where. Is. My. _Son_?"

"I don't know, Kushina-taichou. I was only told -"

Kushina dropped him and stepped into another _Shunshin_ as the bottom of her stomach fell out and dread climbed up her throat.

Her backyard was strewn with charred wood beams, splintered furniture, ruined heirlooms dating back before the fall of Uzu and broken masonry cutting deep swathes into her garden. It was the circle of medic-nins, however, that monopolized her attention, drawing her in with feet made heavy and yet swift by worry and dread.

Hands aglow with the Shōsen roamed over a still figure resting in a fetus position on the blackened grass, far too long-limbed to be her Naruto. Kushina's relief morphed into a spike of horror and guilt, however, as she glimpsed the waxen, ravaged and barely recognizable face of Momoko, her whole back a blackened, ruined crater.

"Kushina."

Pain. Anger. Relief. _Hope_. She recognized his voice, but for a long moment she couldn't take her eyes off Momoko. Then the lead medic shifted back on his haunches, grimacing behind his surgery mask; the green glows abated, one of the medics swept her friend's eyelids close, and the spell was broken.

"Take me to him." _Please_.

The feeling of instant movement, faster than the fastest _shinsun_ , was at the same time familiar, wistful and exhilarating. Kushina stomped down on those stray thoughts with the weight of her worry in the blink of an eye it took her to adjust to the warmer overhead lights, the monotone quietness of the room and the aseptic air typical of an hospital.

Naruto was fast asleep on a white, candid bed, his chubby face wrapped in sterile gauze and an IV dripping into his arm. A toad plushie, only half-sizzled around one limb, rested close to his pillow, a treasured gift from Jiraiya-kyoufu. He looked… at peace and his skin was warm under the blankets when she found his hand to make sure her eyes weren't playing tricks to her, or this was a genjutsu.

He plopped heavily down on a chair behind her as she took place against the bed's railing, beside _her_ son. "The medics say he'll be alright by tomorrow morning. Only some minor bruising and a few cracked ribs, already mended. Momoko shielded him with her body."

Kushina blinked, then nodded, her eyes fixed on her baby boy as a pang of grief tore at her heart. _Oh, my dear Momoko..._

"Is this place safe?" she asked.

"Nobody but Rin and her assistant know he's here, and I have Kakashi and his team watch over him already." He tilted his head to the door. "I can alert Obito and Mikoto-san as well, if you want, but nobody else: I don't want to draw too much attention on him, and the village is in a whirlwind. Multiple attacks on several Clans, and they almost made off with the Hyuga heiress. Just as I was dealing with the Kumo ambassador. There's enough on our hands to spring another Great War."

"Then it's Kumo behind this?"

He shrugged, but he could feel his eyes boring into her back, intense and pensive. "Seems so. Ibiki is chatting the only prisoner and initial analysis would point to nuke-nins, mercenaries backed by Kumo, or even the Kinkaku Squad: they left behind a trail of bodies long enough to be them. Not really subtle, very organized, superbly equipped… lots of Raiton thrown around too." She could imagine him pursing his lips.

"It's too obvious. And let's not forget the assaulters were quite adept at fuinjutsu as well, enough to break both yours and the Hyuga's security. Something Kumo isn't exactly reknown for."

"They have a mole in my Clan."

He sighed at her bluntness, sounding far older than he actually was, but not in denial. She pressed on, glaring a hole into the wall, words fast and burning a hole through her teeth.

" _Grandmother_ designed the wards protecting the house: no two-bits Kumo fucker could have surpassed them. Even then, nobody but an Uzumaki, or someone breast-fed fuinjutsu by an Uzumaki, could recognize of the secondary failsafe and the circular triple-backup mechanism triggering the defensive wards. Anyone else would've died of chakra poisoning and I'd know even before that." She squeezed her eyes shut against the ache in her chest. "Instead they get through. Momoko must have overcharged the additional wards in Naruto's room with her blood before they could surpass those too. And still."

"I'd put myself and Jiraiya-sensei out of the list of suspects, thank you. That still leaves most of your Clan's Seal Masters in though, from Goro-san down. _Maybe_ Homura and some of the Hyuga and Senju masters as well." She heard his lips smack in a grimace. "Orochimaru, too. I'll put the ANBU on it, but… there's something else."

Kushina fought back the urge to scream and turn around to face _him_. She even managed to keep her voice mostly level.

"What?"

"It begs the question: why _Naruto_? If they were only after the Uzumaki bloodline, like for the Hyuga, the Uchiha or the Nara, there were easier targets. Unprotected, as you said, by Mito's own wards."

The breath caught in her throat as her mind jumped to what was being implied. "The Kyuubi."

He shrugged again - she could hear his haori shifting on his shoulders in that familiar way, and his adjusting his position on the uncomfortable hospital chair - and his voice took a sharper edge. "Less than ten people know what really happened that night, Kushina. We sacrificed another boy's life to make sure of that."

"Danzo -"

"I _know_ , but Danzo is also patriot, first and foremost. Do you see him giving away Naruto to the enemy? To Kumo or, Kami forbid, Iwa?"

Silence settled stretched. Kushina watched her son sleep, his tiny hand slightly balled up in hers, the rhythmic beeping of the monitors and the slow rise and fall of his chest marking the seconds ticking away. The ugly snake of doubt and suspicion coiled and uncoiled in her stomach, injecting its venom with a veritable burning ache, until it assumed the connotations of certainty.

"They wanted to hit _you_."

Behind her, she could feel him nod, but he didn't look away from the nape of her neck. "It's… very likely, though I haven't the slightest how they could know. Kumo isn't the only one with an interest in the Byakugan, but even A isn't that overt and blunt to strike on our turf during negotiations _he_ wanted." A slow, calming breath left his nose, and she could hear the joints of his hands creaking as he balled them into fists. "Their ambassador is denying any and all involvement, and unless Ibiki digs up something, I'm inclined to believe him. The Raikage would have sent his hitmen against _me,_ not my children. This stinks of Onoki Two-Scales."

A fickle of genuine concern, despite everything between them, wormed it way into her voice, even as her mind plotted to murder the Tsuchikage's wrinkled ass in the slowest, most painful ways she could come up with. "Are your wife and Tamako-chan alright?"

"A bit shocked, but unharmed, thank you. It seems they didn't have the same insights on the Shodai's defenses. The alarms warned me." What happened next, Kushina could easily guess.

"Good."

Another minute of silence stretched, then she heard him get up from his seat and take a couple of steps forward. The heat of his hand as it hovered just an inch over her shoulder made the part of her that still loved him - _that would always love him_ \- strive to lean in, but she resisted the brief urge by shoving it into the mental closet where it belonged. A few seconds later, the hand retracted.

"Consider yourself on extended furlough. Stay with him. If you think it's better, I can have Inoichi-san have a look at him when he wakes." He sighed. "I'll talk with Jiraiya-sensei and Sarutobi-sama and we'll find who's behind this, and who's their plant. I promise you, Kushina."

"Thank you." When he didn't move, she added. "Go back to your family, Minato. I'll manage."

She caught just a glimpse of spiky yellow hair and a white haori adorned with licking flames at the bottom before the Kage Bushin crossed his fingers and vanished without even a poof of ninja smoke, leaving her alone with her son.

"It's all right, Naruto-kun," she soothed her son in his sleep. "Everything will be alright in the end." And with that, one hand around her son's and the other gripping the end of an half-formed Adamantine Chain rattling against her leg, she prepared herself for the long night.

* * *

"This will be our new home for a while, Naruto-kun. And this is your room. Do you like it?"

"Yeah. I guess."

"You can have your friends over too for your big birthday party next week. What do you think? Do you want to see Sasuke, Karin and Idate?"

"… can Momoko-chan come too?"

"Naruto-kun… Momoko-chan is still at the hospital. Those shinobi, they hurt her badly, and she needs time to recover."

"Can I go see her?"

"It's better not. The doctors say she needs lots of rest. But I saw her briefly, and she sends you all of her love. She says… she says she'll have some of your secret tea ready for next time she babysits you."

"… I couldn't help her."

"Naruto-kun…"

"She was bleeding a lot and it wouldn't stop and she-told-me-to-go-under-my-bed-and-then… she had this look on her face… I - I'm sorry, I - I -"

"Shhh. Here, it's alright. My big baby boy. Everything will be alright, your kaasan's here."

" - strong."

"Hmm?"

"I-I want to be strong. So when they come again, I can protect you and Momoko-chan and everyone else."

"Naruto, listen to me: nobody will come to hurt you anymore. Hokage-sama has sent the bad men a… message, and they will make sure nobody will try to harm you again. You are still too young to start training. Let's wait until you're a bit taller, hmm?"

"Idate says Ibiki-oji trains him since he was three. I'm almost five ."

"Ibiki can be very… intense at times, Naruto-kun."

"Kaasan, please. I… I don't want to feel like that."

"What do you mean?"

"Like when Momoko-chan was hurt and I only watched. I don't want to feel like that anymore."

"Oh, Naruto-kun… why don't we have dinner now? Kaasan will think about it tonight, and tomorrow we can talk about this when we aren't all so tired."

"You promise?"

"Pinky-swear."

* * *

The inner courtyard of the Uzumaki's temporary residence was a small patch of green land that enjoyed the cool shadow of one or another of the Senju's sentinel trees during most of the day. Those were more common the closer one walked into the beating heart of Konoha and the seat of its power: the Flower District, which spanned indeed almost a fourth of the entire village and covered both the Compounds of the major clans - Senju, Uchiha, Hyuga, Sarutobi and Uzumaki- and the summer estates of Fire Country's nobility, now boarded up in the thick of winter.

Minato had transferred them to some wine merchant's complex, sequestered earlier in spring from the man's family as refunding for some ill-fated mission in Kawa no Kuni doomed by the merchant withholding critical information, and turned into something of an temporary ANBU hideout. She had made sure to inspect it all before she brought Naruto in, screw the ANBU's reassurances, but Naruto and herself only kept to a wing of the place, where the servants and guards used to reside, and the inner courtyard itself. Not that she hadn't warded every entry and access point, visible or potential, with the nastiest fuin arrays in her extensive repertoire, but the echoing, lacquered halls and the opulent surfaces unnerved her.

They reminded her of the Senju residence, and she had little in the terms of fond memories of the place.

Kushina glimpsed the still form of an ANBU in the shadow of the porch, cloaked under a near-perfect Meisagakure, then shifted on the uncomfortable boulder and returned her complete attention to her son's exercises.

"Again."

Naruto, now five and a half years old, huffed, wiped the building sweat clean with a towel, leaving red hair plastered to his brow, and lowered himself into a the starting stance of his assigned kata. She watched, proud and critical, as he moved through the basic forms of Reppan-Rÿu, the Uzumaki own style of taijutsu, with all the awkwardness and determination of a stubborn five years old wanting to please his mother and show up the rest of the world.

His arms and shoulders were stiff and angled a bit oddly, but Kushina let that slide for the moment, focusing on his footwork. Naruto stepped cautiously but not jerkily into the gaps left by the criss-crossing chakra chains carpeting the garden and unravelling from her hands, careful not to even brush any of the links, or he'd have to start over with the exercise.

From time to time, she sent minute chakra pulses down her Kongō Fūsa, shifting them across the dry, grey grass, forcing Naruto to feel - or guess - the alteration unless he wanted to step right onto another chain. He failed more often than not, but Kushina wasn't troubled, and she made sure to reward his every success and whoop of joy with mirroring excitement.

"Don't restrict yourself to sight only, Naruto-kun. Ear the clinks, feel the air shift, the crack of the grass and my chakra moving through the chain."

Naruto nodded stubbornly, and she smiled at him, sending out another pulse of chakra. The chain shifted, and Naruto stepped square onto it.

"Kaasan! I was doing so well!"

She flicked him in the forehead at his pouting and kneeled until she was eye level with him. "And you'll do better every day, Naruto-kun. Now go dry yourself up and pick up your tools: we'll go over sharpening and maintenance after you've rested a bit."

"Can we do seals again later?" he asked under her ruffling hand, and his tone was so begging she was hard pressed in saying no.

"Depending how you do on your math and geometry assignment." He pouted again, and she fixed him with her stern 'teacher' look. "You can't draw a good seal if you don't know the rules behind the curves and shapes."

He huffed, lower lip jutting out, and she ruffled his hair again to his wordless cry of protest, then he skipped out of the garden as Kushina's chains reverted to pure, formless chakra into her coils.

A small chakra signature and the mild tingling of one of the seals etched into her forearm warned her of the friendly presence at one of the gates, and a small smile curled the edge of her lips. With a wave of her hand she dismissed the Cat ANBU, one of Kakashi's own pupils, and proceeded to unfold a blanket on the porch for Naruto to display his ninja tools for the following lesson.

Even in the thick of winter, the air only held a pleasant chill, so Kushina tended to keep Naruto outside as long as she could. Kami knew the forced separation from his friends at the Compound and out, barred some remotely in-between visits, were taking an hard toll on him even before the news dropped in at the beginning of the Academy semester.

She was nearly done when the rush of fleeing air announced the _Shunshin_ somewhere to her left.

"Kushina-nee."

"Obito-kun. It's been so long."

The red-haired Uzumaki and the lithe, spike-haired Uchiha hugged each other, Obito's single arm squeezing the shorter woman's shoulders.

"Look at you," she said, holding him at arms' length, one hand just above the stump at his shoulder. "Lean and clean and so handsome in your flak jacket. Out hunting to break some girl's heart?"

He smiled ruefully, eyes crinkling with mirth behind his goggles. "Ne, Kushina-nee-chan. I'm just a Chunin: kunoichi these days chase only after career Jounins."

"Bullshit, Obito. I'd bet my money on you against every Elite Jonin in the Village."

Obito's ink black eyes swirled with a sheen of red for a moment, then his smile widened, if a bit stiff. "Don't let Rin-chan hear that."

Kushina's face turned conspiratorial. "Oh, I thinks she's due in a few minutes. Don't let your nee-chan's presence stop you from taking your chance."

Obito blanched, his already pale complexion turning milky white, and he made to turn away when an hard bark of laughter stopped him cold.

"I hate you, nee-chan"

"Double bull, and you know it. Come on, don't be a scarecrow, sit down. Naruto will be around in a jiffy, and you can make yourself useful by teaching him some of your secret Uchiha shurikenjutsu stuff."

Obito shook his head with a chuckle and sat down cross legged on one corner of the stretched blanket. "Hell, why not? Might give Fugaku-dono an heart attack. One can only hope."

Naruto re-emerged shortly after, wearing a fresh white long-sleeved tee and black pants, wrists and ankles bandaged not too tightly with ninja tape, and found his mother chatting up with the one-armed Uchiha.

"Obito-nii!"

The next hour flew away in a climate of exuberant cheer. Obito did his best to keep his word and get a little further up still on his Clan Leader's shit list, giving pointers and advice to Naruto on how to keep and wield his tools, to the point of adjusting his grip, stance and aim when Kushina relented and allowed the boys to play target practice. Naruto could barely refrain from bouncing on his toes in excitement, and a good twenty minutes passed by as Obito related, step by step, some of his most adventurous missions to a starry-eyed Naruto, while Kushina quietly rolled her eyes on the side at the load of embellishments, arm-waving and outright lies, but didn't spoil their fun.

After a while, however, Obito looked up at the clock and sighed, levering himself up from his cross-legged position. "Ano, Naruto-kun. I've gotta go."

The redhead's face crumpled. "But! You've only been here only an hour. Top!"

"Hey now, don't fret: I'll be around again before you know it! Until then, I've got something for you." The one-armed Chunin unrolled a storage scroll from his thigh side-pockets, one of the cheap, mass-produced models every shinobi shop worth its name used in lieu of shopping bags these days. A quick pulse of chakra lit the seal up and in a puff of smoke, the contents flopped on the thin sheet of paper.

"Whoa! This is so cool!"

Naruto picked up the jacket reverently, turning it around in his hands, then zipped it down and wiggled his way into it. It was a dark shade of blue, the kind that reminded Kushina of pictures of the sea around Uzushiogakure; a thick, high collar of Lightning's white wool, several practical pockets along the sides and a large, crimson spiral on the back completed the picture. It fell a bit from Naruto's shoulders, no matter how much he shrugged into it, but there was no dimming his full-toothed smile.

"This is the best present ever, Obito-nii!"

Obito chuckled. "And you haven't seen half of it. So I went to this shop, but I didn't know how much of a runt you still were. Clearly more than I thought…" Naruto stuck his tongue out at him, an action Obito mirrored before continuing. "… but I'm nothing if a man prepared for every hurdle, so I had something extra built in. Can you channel charka into stuff yet?"

"Of course I can!"

"Nope, you can't." Kushina corrected him. Naruto sulked a bit, giving his mother a betrayed look. "Oh, don't be like that. We're Uzumaki: we just have that much more chakra to throw around than pretty boy here and pretty much everybody else. You'll have it down in no time, and then you can crush all the opposition for mocking you! Just like your kaasan!"

"Modest, too," Obito deadpanned.

"Naruto's the five years old here, Obito-kun. Don't cut in on his business."

"Hey! I'm almost six!"

Obito rolled his eyes and knelt until he was eye level with Naruto. "As I was saying, this may seem a bit loose. But if you channel some chakra into this seal here, just under the neck… better now, huh?"

A faint prickling sensation run over Naruto's skin and then the cloth followed it, brushing and contracting around his arms, shoulders and torso until it was a perfect fit. Naruto's lips made a small, silent O with just an hint of sharp canines, and Kushina whistled appreciatively.

"Chakra reactive cloth and a size adjusting seal. Nice."

"Thank you for spoiling the magic, nee-chan."

"Oh, I'm _so_ sorry, Magician Obito." She batted her eyelashes at him, then her expression softened looking at Naruto spinning in the garden, pure, unbridled ecstasy on his face. "Seriously, thank you. It must have cost you a lot."

Obito waved her off, turning to look at Naruto as well. "Ah, don't mention it. It was worth it." He followed Naruto's frolicking for a few seconds, then sighed. "This whole situation, the continuous protection, and now the delay in attending prep-school… It must not be easy on him."

"It would be easier if Minato stopped being a dumb asshole," Kushina glowered. "Did you know he intends to keep Naruto confined in here until the investigation on the assault's over? For safety, sure, and yet the Hyuga princess, Sasuke-kun and Tamako-chan attend school with everyone else. He doesn't even have the decency to say it to my face."

"He told me he offered to pay for private instructors until this whole mess' over…"

"Again, dumb," Kushina huffed. "Unless he wanted to pay them to _live_ in here until he graduates, because that's how long this mess's going to last at the very _least_ , it would go beyond the very point behind keeping Naruto low-profile. Besides, I can teach him just fine, keep him on par with the classes. That's not the point."

Obito chuckled weakly. "Yeah, I saw. Math and geometry? Isn't that a bit early?"

"Once a lazyass, always a lazyass." Obito groaned and Kushina shrugged, but a small smile played on her face. "He won't stop pestering me about seals, and it's not like it's higher calculus. Pretty basic stuff." As fast as it appeared, however, it evaporated, and her face hardened. She followed Naruto's path in the grey expanse of the courtyard, and both waved at him when he spun around, arms outstretched.

Kushina took the Uchiha to the side on the way to the main door, and her glare could have sent every predator in Training Ground 44 skittering away with their tail tucked between her legs. That there were ANBU nearby was a given, but she didn't particularly care if they eavesdropped.

"I have a message for him, Obito. Tell Minato I won't have my son to grow a recluse because that bitch Senju Aiko and her father would rather forget he - _we_ \- existed. He has until the start of the next semester to pull his shit together and grow a pair. He doesn't want to acknowledge him? Fine, but I won't allow for politics and grudges to stop my son from living a normal life while he can."

Obito nodded, then his eyes tinged with a sheen worry and sadness. "I'll make sure he hears that," he said, putting his hand on her shoulder. "Nee-chan, the Hokage… I think he still cares about you. Both of you. But with Goro-dono and your Clan Elders putting pressure on him on one side, and the Senju pulling on the other, he has to compromise." The Uchiha grimaced. "He was always quite good at that."

Kushina's eyes turned to the ceiling, her lips set into a sour line. "Confiding in Goro about Minato and I… that was a big damn mistake," she ground out, her shoulders slouching in self-disgust. "And Naruto is paying the price for his politicking."

"I know, but it won't be for long now. Oh!" He gave a weak chuckle, at which Kushina rose an annoyed eyebrow. The Uchiha scratched the back of his head, a boyish grin on his lips. "I kind of forgot: Jiraiya-sama sent a frog ahead just this morning. Tsunade-hime and he are coming back in the next few days. If I were you, I'd get started and fill Naruto's entrance sheet. That, or your mourning dress."

* * *

"How bad is it?"

The Hokage's office was a wide room of deceiving simplicity and elegant furbishing, meant to host foreign delegations and emergency war meetings alike. As the midday winter sun filtered through the sentinel trees' foliage, however, the two legendary shinobi had the room all for themselves. One sported a head of blond hair atop the stately vests of office, left incomplete by a discarded hat; the other's attire wouldn't be out of place in kabuki representations in the capital city of Keishi.

New lines deepened on Jiraiya's face. "On a scale from One to Uzu's Razing? Nagato has dropped off the map entirely: not even the Toads can find him. Akatsuki's taken the hit, and badly too: many believed him the second coming of the Sage, and are now laying down arms, returning to Hanzo's fold. Iwa's involvement's just the icing on the cake."

Minato leaned back on his seat, staring up at the glowing privacy ward on the ceiling, one fingers brushing the hilt of a kunai in passing. "So it's true? Onoki's people are taking the field?"

"They already have. A few dozen here, a platoon of the Explosion Corps there. And one of Akatsuki's holdouts in North Ame was razed by the Gobi's Jinchuuriki. Two Scales would probably flood the whole region if his people didn't fear you so much and if the Stone Secessionist weren't giving him such a nasty headache."

Minato nodded, lips pressing into a thin line, then stopped as Jiraiya's expression turned grimmer. "Yahiko?"

"He's upset. Scratch that, he's mad. At Nagato, and at us. I refuted him when he asked for more support, like you ordered. Didn't take it well."

"I imagine it wasn't easy for you, but you did the right thing sensei." Minato rubbed his eyes and the dark circles under them. And it was only midday. "Konoha can't push more their way short of taking the field, not with Kumo on the lookout after the kidnappings. We get involved openly, and it'll be open war again.

"It'll spill out of Ame anyway, Minato," Jiraiya folded his arms across his broad chest. "Akatsuki still has access to our black funds: I have it from my contacts that Yahiko is buying weapons from Tani and the Fuuma Clan. Worse, he's sent feelers to those Kaguya Clan nutjobs from Kusagakure. If they get involved, things will escalate quickly and when they lose - because they _will_ lose without Nagato - Hanzo will have all the reasons he needs to push into Kusa."

Minato tapped his desk. "But he won't. Both the Fire Daimyo and Konoha have standing treaties with Kusa, and he knows it. One step across the border, and we're _entitled_ to put his forces into the ground, in self-defense. If he does…" The Hokage drummed his fingers on the hard oak of his desk. "If he does, we'll crush him, for good, and Akatsuki can have Ame as per agreements."

"There won't be an Akatsuki to speak of once Hanzo and Iwa are through with them!"

"Would you prefer another Shinobi World War then? Are they worth this peace we've crafted?" Minato sighed, and his blue eyes met his sensei's narrowed ones. "Are you absolutely sure Nagato didn't defect to Hanzo or another nation? There can be no mistakes when the Rinnegan is involved, sensei."

Jiraiya closed his eyes for a long moment and exhaled, then stood up with a mighty creak from his seat and picked up the framed photograph on the Hokage's desk.

"Just like her father," he muttered. "You shouldn't show this on your desk when the outsiders come knocking."

"Sensei."

"… Konan was the last to speak to him. He was… perplexed is probably the best word, from what she tells. You know already the Rinnegan has always granted him visions. Of what was or will be, of chakra, the Sage only knows." The Toad Sennin placed the photo back on the desk and started pacing. "Apparently, they grew worse these past few years. More intense. And he became more and more disillusioned with Akatsuki's mission."

"He told Konan he'd find his own and the world's peace. A couple of hours later, puff, he was gone."

Minato rose an eyebrow, hands meeting on his desk around a three-pronged kunai. "Just like that."

"Yes, just like that. They sent out scouting parties, but even Konan's own brand of sensing didn't pick up a trace. That was two weeks ago."

"Two weeks?" The Hokage's eyebrows inched upwards, then plummeted. "What took you so long?"

Jiraiya retook his seat, his spiky white mane a shroud falling on his shoulders and spilling over the struggling backseat. "One of my agents reported in when we crossed back into Fire. Said Nawaki's murderer had been spotted near Sora Ku, the old Uchiha stronghold. The identikit matched."

The Minato Jiraiya remembered from five years before, still new and uncomfortable in Sarutobi's old robes and struggling to come to terms with the reality behind the dream and his choices, that Minato would have shot to his feet, quiet rage in his eyes and one Hiraishin away from taking the man behind the Kyuubi's Unleashing head on and, more importantly, alone, like he almost had that fateful night.

The only thing that belied that Minato's endured existence was a darkening of the Hokage's blue eyes as they shifted on him and narrowed slightly in focus, a dusting of early crow's feet letting themselves be seen. For the rest, he remained impassible, if tense around the shoulders.

Jiraiya decided that the Old Monkey and Daisuke Senju had been teaching his former pupil well. Probably _too_ well.

"You should have sent word. It could have been a trap."

A bark of laughter, hard and self-deprecating, echoed in the office. "We are still the Sannin, Minato-kun, and both of us are Sennin. Besides, you want to tell Tsunade-hime to get off _Nawaki's murderer_ trail? Please."

Minato scowled, then shook his head and shrugged. "Suit yourself. So, what happened?"

Jiraiya pondered his words. "Sora Ku is officially a desert city, bar the ninja cats. The Uchiha might want to send someone down to scour the ruins and retrieve them. Tell them to pack shovels and Doton."

"They're not going to like this."

"Well, they're going to like what comes next even less," Jiraiya said, grimacing and surreptitiously giving the privacy seals a once over. Satisfied, he continued. "So, it was a trap, points for originality, and we sprung it. The few residents and Uchiha retainers were long dead, several months at least is Tsunade's judgement. In their place were those mute, masked kids, some further along their teens. All with the blasted Sharingan."

Minato edged forward on his chair. "The wayward Uchihas. I assume you took care of them. Any sign of the Father? Did any possess the Mangekyou Sharingan?"

"I was getting there and no, Kami be praised." Jiraiya shook his head, smiling wrily. "One was bad enough at the time. After we dealt with them, Katsuyu-sama discovered an underground complex they were seemingly protecting, smack in the center of the city."

"Tell me you found something valuable."

"It was emptied and scrubbed clean long before we came, but the Father didn't bother to take away some of the old medical equipment. Nothing remarkable per se, or so he must have thought." Jiraiya chuckled. "My hime restored power to a couple and went to work on the fresh samples we gathered outside. That they weren't tainted with the Kyuubi's youkai helped a lot."

Jiraiya paused, letting the silence become just poignant enough for theatrics' sake like the travelled screenwriter and author he was. Minato groaned silently, but waited.

"Turns out, this Father is both a medical genius, and supremely arrogant in underestimating my hime's medical prowess. She'll give the eggheads the full report later, but the long and short of it is that the Father's using clones, from the same sample."

Minato's eyes widened under his blond bangs and his eyebrows inched up on his forehead, and then some. "Clones? Full functioning clones?"

"Tsunade-hime said something about DNA degradation and long-term degeneration, and each had a complex medical fuin array in place to slow that, but they certainly fought well enough."

Minato's gaze wandered, lost in thought, until he was staring off at one wall, equal parts of him horrified and amazed. His former sensei's voice shook him out of it just as a question blossomed on his lips.

"Yes, the Sharingans were cloned too. And they worked."

Minato Namikaze, the Butcher of Iwa, actually blanched. "This… this is what Orochimaru was attempting before he left. Artificial Bloodline replication."

The mention of his erstwhile teammate and title-holder had a familiar stab of ghost pain slither through Jiraiya's ribs where the Kusanagi found its mark once. "His late experiments, yes. The fuin arrays do away with most of the Uzumaki core precepts, just like Maru was wont to do. The method is similar too, from what my hime can tell. More refined than what we recovered from his labs and… study subjects, but it's largely the same process."

Minato leaned heavily on his desk, chin resting on his thumbs and fingers hiding the lower end of his face. For a long minute, the only sound was that of Minato's thinking. To his credit, the now-Hokage didn't interrupt the meeting to consult with his _advisors_.

 _'Stop right there,'_ the Toad Sennin urged his own spiteful side. Minato's breaking the silence saved him the next moment from mental ruminations that would just spoil his mood further. _'Quite the feat, that.'_

"I'll need to inform Kagami and Fugaku Uchiha. Neither of you can't tell anyone else about this, sensei, not even the medical corps, Sarutobi-dono or the Senju. If this gets out, and the other nations catch wind of _any_ of this…"

Jiraiya nodded. "The Father will have more pursuers than he knows what to do with them. Or buyers, if he hasn't already. I'll tell Tsunade-hime to deliver her reports to your desk then."

"Good. Where is she, by the way?" An hint of a smile, something Jiraiya saw only so often from his former student, tugged at the corners of the man's lips. A nervous one born of the need for momentary diversion, but beggars can't be choosers. "Finally got fed up with you and your shameless erotica for old men?"

Jiraiya huffed theatrically, cringing inside. "So spoke the affectionate reader. After a year and a half breast to breast and with her upbringing, you'd think she had learned to recognize art already." He winked salaciously, and Minato snorted. "Alas, 'tis not meant to be. Yet."

The Hokage shook his head, then his voice sobered. "Seriously, where is she? With these new developments, I'd expect to see her with you first things first. I know she must have missed Shizune-san and…"

"Don't play dumb, Minato. You don't know how." The Hokage sighed and met Jiraiya's glare where all traces of warmth were rapidly dimming. "She opted out after she learned you put Naruto in some posh merchant house and stopped him from attending the Academy. Wasn't sure she could refrain from punching you out of your chair, so she went ahead and visited. She brought the boy gifts too, I think. Late birthday and missed occasions."

Minato held his sensei's accusing gaze. "How did you learn where he was before even setting foot in the Village?"

"I'm your spymaster," Jiraiya snorted without mirth, a rumbling sound that echoed from his broad chest. "At least for foreign business. I always knew: not much you can hide from me, especially when it involves one of my godchildren. Why? Why the difference in treatment?"

"You mean I should listen to Goro Uzumaki, recognize the child legally and make him my heir?"

Jiraiya cut the air in front of him with a palm, frowning. "Cut the crap," he said in a tone more appropriate to scolding an unruly genin than speaking to one's Kage. "If you want the truth, yes, yes you should, just to be fair to the boy and Kushina. But you made your choice, and she respected that and you. I'm not saying you should start a Clan War over it and allow the Senju to complete Kiri's and Kumo's work: just tell the old Uzumaki geezer where to stuff it, and allow both of your children to live their youth while they have it."

Minato stiffened in his seat, eyes resting briefly the photograph on the desk, then he swiveled around and was on his feet, reaching the back of the room and the wall-long window with a couple of steps. Even this high up on the Holage tower, the sentinel trees of the Senju dominated the landscape; the sunlight reached the glass filtered through a hundred thousand leaves and changing with every breath of the wind, playing games with one's sight and picturing impossible shapes on the far wall.

Standing against such a kaleidoscope of colors, the tips of the Yondaime's blond hair seemed aflame, but the man under it let out a long breath and seemed to deflate: his shoulders slouched, his head hung and his clasped hands slackened behind his back.

"I should, and I want to, believe me. But even if others wish otherwise, he's my son, and that means he's a target. He always will be a target, and that's not accounting the Kyuubi. Doubly so now that this part of the truth has leaked out, somehow. He needs to be protected."

"You can't keep him locked into a house for the rest of his life."

Minato turned around, eyes darkened in frustration. "And I won't! But first, he must become strong, strong enough to survive out there. I intend to see to that. And you will too, when the time comes." The Hokage glanced down at the framed picture again. "Tamako has the entirety of her mother's family and the ANBU looking after her and protecting her. Naruto has Kushina: she's good, but how long before she slips? How long before my son is dead and the Kyuubi's on the loose again?"

"You're underestimating Kushina, Minato. And the boy was victim of an attempted kidnapping: if you can justify Clan escorts for the Uchiha, Hyuuga and everyone else, you can do the same for the Uzumaki. He's of the line of Mito, for Kami's sake: his people will jump to protect him."

"And that's the main problem," Minato said. "Kushina is convinced someone in her Clan collaborated with the attempt at Naruto. A Seal Master, and one good enough to disrupt Mito's protections. I'm… inclined to believe her."

Jiraiya scowled darkly, but his body remained posed and in control, betraying not a single unwanted muscle twitch.

"I see. You found anything?"

Minato shook his head. "Nothing, which is hardly surprising, considering we're dealing with Seal Masters here. I even had Danzo's people look -" Jiraiya glowered, and Minato rolled his eyes. "Right, let's not get there. Still, nothing, just suspicions. And now it seems the nuke-nins _did_ hail from Kumo, but were employed by Iwa. The implications are… distressing is a way to put it."

"You want me to look into it?"

Minato shook his head. "I need you working on the Father's trail before it goes cold again. Finding Nagato is another top priority. If it turns out he defected to another country…"

Jiraiya grimaced, lips pursing into a thin line, but after a long moment, he nodded stiffly.

"Good. You and Tsunade take a couple days to R&R, file your reports, visit around, then I need you back to work. Father's connection to Orochimaru is troubling, but is another path to follow. One we didn't have before."

"Yeah, because Maru is notoriously easy to find and an eager conversationalist."

Minato sighed, rubbing the back of his head vigorously. "I know, I know, but only a Sage can keep up with a Sage, right?"

"True enough," Jiraiya grunted, then chuckled. "My hime isn't going to like this."

"It's only a couple of days."

"You know her. Two days here is one day too long. Expect reports of drunken vandalism and destruction of village property."

Minato gave him an arch look. "I trust you'll keep her in check."

"I can only promise keep up with her drink by drink. Seeing Shizune and Rin again will help, probably." Jiraiya levelled a faintly amused look back at the Hokage. "You keep your wife's family out of her hair."

"Deal." Minato returned to his seat and plopped down on it rather bonelessly. "Now, about the Ame situation…" All traces of amusement fled the Sennin's face. "I'm cutting down Akatsuki's funds, but if it's too late and the Kaguya Clan gets involved, there's not much else we can do short of assassinating Hanzo."

Jiraiya frowned, then shook his head. "You might be able to manage it if someone tagged him, but Hanzo's old, not senile. Old and paranoid. There's just as many chances you'll get a tag on the Tsuchikage or the Demon Emperor."

"Which is why I'm having Danzo-san take charge of the Ame theater to sabotage his alliance with Iwa, and let _them_ rip each other apart."

One could have heard a pin drop in the Hokage's office. After a while, Jiraiya's seat creaked as the corpulent Sennin shifted and leaned back. It didn't take S-rank levels of observation to see the Hokage wasn't joking.

"Have you lost your mind, Minato?! First Naruto, now this?" Jiraiya erupted to his feet, snarling. His chair toppled to the floor with a crash. "Danzo and his zombie ROOT minions in charge? You're signing Yahiko's and Konan's death sentences!"

The Hokage was unperturbed, the younger man's weariness evaporating as he straightened, once more every inch the Hokage. Jiraiya distantly considered he could probably match the Old Monkey's composure. "Theirs and all of Akatsuki's, but only if the situation becomes unsalvageable. Konoha risks to be exposed too much by trusting in your students."

"You were my student too, Minato."

"I was," the blonde agreed, then his voice sharpened. "Now I'm your Hokage, a position you were offered before me, _repeatedly_ , and refused, because you knew what the position entailed. I thought I did too, when I accepted. I only learned later. Now, it's my duty to uphold the Will of Fire at any cost, and your students are ultimately _not_ Konoha. If you'd taken them back to the village at the time, things would have been different, but you didn't."

Jiraiya's fists tightened. "You can't ask me to forfeit them."

"I'm not asking, Jiraiya-sensei. I'm giving you an order to continue protecting Konoha as you've done for so long. We're Shinobi: sacrifice to the village is our _duty_."

Jiraiya stood, tall and terrible, and Minato braced himself for an outburst, or a stampede out of his office. He was rather shocked, however, when the big man's chest heaved, and a look of incredible sadness flickered across his face.

"You truly have grown into the hat, Minato," the Sennin said, and Minato knew it was no praise on his sensei's part. "You are following the path Sensei left for you more closely than you realize, and his mistakes too. Yes, we are shinobi, sacrifice made flesh, tools to the Will of Fire and the Village's well-being… but there's one thing I think the Professor never grasped, or accepted, and I'd hate to see the consequences if you didn't either."

The Toad Sennin turned around and made for the door in long, clanging steps. "You can ask someone to sacrifice only so much for a Village that gives little back and takes apart _everything_ you've ever loved… before they say no." Minato didn't move to follow, nor he called after him with an order or a question: he didn't trust himself to speak. To him, Jiraiya was cycling through old emotions and memories. The fight with the Father's minions had likely taken more out of him than he was willing to admit. Or maybe he was more similar to Tsunade-hime than even he realized.

"Sensei circumvented that, often, by _not_ asking. His blindness and prejudice cost us Maru, and his deafness made it so that my hime's loyalty to Konoha verges on finding her brother's killer. Me?"

He snorted, but there was no real humor behind it. "Look at me, Minato." He turned briefly over his shoulder, then averted his eyes. "Sensei took and took and _took_ from us when we were grown men and woman already, loyal Shinobi of the Leaf, and left husks behind of the survivors. A man-whore, a vengeful drunkard and… whatever the fuck Maru has become. How long before a child, and one with such a headstrong mother, comes to see things as they really are, underneath the propaganda and fairy-tales? What do you think will happen when you reveal just what he's keeping at bay, on top of years of isolation, single-minded purpose and envy?"

On the door, as the privacy wards disengaged and the light dimmed in the office, if only by a fraction. Jiraiya turned to look at his student once more. "Listen to a fool, for once. Put people you can _both_ trust to guard Naruto, and let him live, let him be happy, like Nawaki-san and Mito-sama did before him. You saw the signs: the other Villages are gathering their forces. Another War's coming."

The privacy seals died, the door clicked shut and Minato Namikaze was alone in his office.

* * *

 _AN: So, stuff. I've seen a lot of Abandoned!Naruto fics on this website and most include a favored twin sister, mustachio-twirling absent parents for no good reason and Criminal/Survivalist!Naruto. Here's my own spin to the concept, plus stuff. And a few minor OCs (save one), because I need to repopulate two entire clans from scratch._

 _For those confused (tell me if you are, it means I failed to convey parts of this story), Minato has married into the Senju Clan, which is still very much kicking. He has a daughter, Tamako Namikaze, from his wife Aiko Senju… and of course he's Naruto's father._

 _Again, this is not a bashing fic. Minato IS quite OOC, but I think it's justified since he went through some very crucial decisions before and after becoming Hokage, and more importantly, to crown his 'dream'. Yes, Nawaki Senju was the previous Container of the Kyuubi, not Kushina. No, neither him or Tsunade could or can use the Mokuton. Nor will Naruto._

 _Also, yeah, Obito and Rin are alive. So is Kakashi. And your guess on the Father's identity is probably right._

 _Don't forget to review, ok? That's pretty important to me right now._


	2. Chapter 2

_AN: Writing kids is oddly entertaining. I'm experimenting a bit here and introducing some of the minor AU elements that stem from Minato still being the head honcho. Also no, I'm not bashing Sasuke, Ino or anyone in this chapter. Just me and Obito having a bit of fun at the children's antics._

* * *

Months passed as winter thickened its tentative hold on Konoha. Snow dusted the inner courtyard of a temporary home that looked more and more like anything but, crunching underfoot and then melting in the pale afternoon sun; frosted spider webs licked the glass of Naruto's window every time he woke up, beautiful and depressing.

High above, the treetops remained evergreen, untouched, not a single flick of white marring their beauty. When Naruto asked again how and why one night, not unlike he had before they left home more than a year before, kaasan turned story time into more lesson time.

And so Naruto learned that the chakra in the trees melted the snow into water and fed off it, and that night he dreamed of his hand melting and then gobbled up by toothed branches and snapping leaves. He woke up screaming.

The next day, kaasan introduced him to the difference between the four different states of matter and how water switched easily between three of them with heat and cold, but knowledge didn't ward of the nightmares, and they came for a long time yet.

Sometimes it wasn't him, but Momoko-chan or kaasan or Ibiki-oji and Idate or Karin or someone else, and the roots grounded him firmly in place, no matter his struggles, unable to do anything. Not even look away.

He still looked up at the sentinel trees and the Shinobi running and hopping on the rope bridges stretching between the trunks, but the wonder was now quelled somehow by a lingering disquiet, especially in the early mornings.

One early winter morning, three months after his sixth birthday, kaasan woke him up by kissing him on the forehead. The she upturned the mattress as he blinked sleepily in his cocoon and sent him rolling on the floor with a yelp. She smiled down at him fondly.

"Still too slow, Naruto-kun. However, you're lucky: no training today. We're going out!"

Naruto blinked the last of the sleep out of his eyes, trying and failing to pick himself up from the cold lacquered floor. "Out?"

Kaasan laughed, strong and clean, and Naruto blinked again. He hadn't heard kaasan laugh like that since… a long time. He hadn't realized how much he missed it, or how contagious it could be.

"Of course. You can't go to the academy without your uniform now, can you?"

Naruto's jaw hung limp, cutting off the bubbling laughter. Then his eyes lit up and he pumped both fists in the air, throwing off the covers that had wrapped around his legs with a whoop and jumping on his feet.

"Dattebayo!"

* * *

The drone of chatter filled the air long before he turned the last corner and what had been a tall, flat roof just a span above the other building emerged as a sprawling complex several stories tall and hundreds of meters away, surrounded by courts, thickets of trees and several grounds of packed earth still smattered with white at the early morning hour.

"Well, here we are. The Shinobi Academy. Excited?"

Naruto thumbed the small utility scroll storing his books hanging from his belt, his breath condensing through his scarf. "Uh…"

"Naruto?"

"There's a lot of people, kaasan."

And indeed there were. Hundreds of children and adults, far more than he'd ever seen in one place, or ever, of all ages from five to thirteen hung around the front courtyard in small pickets and big, pronged crowds. Many of the younger ones were watched over by parents or relatives, at least for the first day of school. Kaasan was far from the only one kitted out in her shinobi gear either.

Like so many blades of black and green grass, the two predominant colors in the academy's standard outfit, they carpeted every inch of space between Naruto and the front door, or so it seemed to the young boy's impressionable eye. He gulped down a knot of anxiety, but refused to heed the small voice in his head urging him to run, and took a step forward.

"Of course there's a lot of people, and thank the gods for it!" she said, ruffling his hair. "You should have seen it during my time: the Academy only taught children from within Konoha, and it was so dull, always the same twenty faces. The Hokage's reforms have indeed lured in quite a lot of people."

"Lure?" Naruto asked, perplexed at the unknown word.

Kaasan chuckled. "Drawn in, enticed. Tricked, if you want. Lots of children from all over Hi no Kuni with the ability to mold and channel at least a little chakra come to study at the academy to become shinobi of the Leaf. I wonder if they'll have enough Jounin-sensei to teach you all in a few years. Don't worry though -" She winked down at him. "You're an Uzumaki. You'll rock the competition back to the Clan Era!"

Naruto looked around, warmth spreading inside him at kaasan's words. Only a few people were looking at him, eyes stopping at his red hair before continuing on. Still, there were a _lot_ of them. And he was supposed to 'rock' them all? "Are you sure, kaasan?"

He didn't know what had taken him all of a sudden, but the prospect of wading through, _into_ that many people suddenly had the enthusiasm that carried him through the previous week abate considerably. He tried to spot Karin or Idate or even Sasuke in the press of people, but there were just too many.

"Look at me, Naruto-kun." Kaasan knelt in front of him, her knees flattening the thin layer of snow underfoot that now resembled sludge more than anything else, what with the hundreds of feet that had trodden on it. "There's no need to be afraid or dither. I went through it, and my academy was _waaay_ more boring than yours." She looked wistful for a moment, then flicked him in the forehead. Naruto leaned back too slowly, again, and patted the new sore spot, but smiled. "Now, let's go over the Uzumaki Rules again."

Naruto took a big breath. "No letting the grown-ups pick on me. No reporting on fellow students unless they are assh- rude," he corrected quickly at kaasan meaningful look. "No excessive violence until the fifth year, and only on those my age or older. Be polite to my temporary teammates and teachers, but don't kiss their bottoms. No sleep in any classes but geography." He paused, took another small breath and finished. "And have a rough idea for the graduation joke already by the end of the first year. Practice makes perfect."

Kaasan snickered, and hugged him briefly. Some of the tension and hesitation seeped away from him as he snuggled briefly in her arms. "You do me proud already, Naruto-kun." The clock struck and the bell tolled, the sound reaching his ears as if he was standing right beside it, but not too close. The sea of students shifted and moved chaotically, some of the grown-ups jumping through half-open windows and slipping into the academy far ahead of their younger, more inexperienced counterparts.

Naruto felt kaasan's hand squeeze his shoulder, pushing him forward gently. "Go now. It won't do to have the lame desk on the first day already. Remember: school is your first battleground!"

And with that, Naruto took his first step into Konoha's academy, and on the road to become a shinobi.

* * *

"Welcome to your second year at the Shinobi academy." The teacher was very tall and tanned, a spiky chocolate ponytail hanging from the back of his head with unnatural stillness. "For those of you new or still reeling from the winter break, I'm Chunin Umino Iruka, and I will be your instructor in all things theoretical and cultural that I hope won't fly out of your head in the sparring field."

Some snickers and laughter echoed in the vast schoolroom, rippling among the rows of three and four desks arranged over several level around the teacher's platform and two large blackboards. Naruto, two-thirds on the back, figured Iruka-sensei would have to write quite big for everyone on the back rows to see. He stole a glance at the bandaged boy with the nose-high coat and round shades sitting beside him, and wondered how he'd manage and if there was something wrong with his health. Only little tuffs of dark hair showed through the gaps. Maybe he was sick?.

"I'm glad to see you're in high spirits, because this year we'll be stepping things up a notch compared to last year. As you've noticed, this classroom is arranged a bit differently than the one you're used to."

"As of this year, group assignments will become a steady presence in your homework and class activities. The students sitting on your row will be nothing short of your teammates for as long as they are beside you, and while individual grades will remain a constant, your profit will also verge, heavily, on these group activities."

Naruto looked quickly to his teammates. The silent, coat-boy with the sunglasses and the bandages around his hands and head was on his left, while on his right a pale, spindly, brown haired girl met his searching gaze and smiled thinly.

"My name is Yakumo, of Clan Kurama," she said with a whispery voice.

"Aburame Shino." Naruto jumped a little on his seat at the flat tone, then smiled nervously. "A pleasure to meet you, Uzumaki-san."

"How do you - oh wait, it's the hair right?" The Aburame kid nodded, and Naruto's smile turned a little more genuine.

"I'm Uzumaki Naruto, Shino-san, Yakumo-san. I hope we'll get along greatly!"

"I too hope you will, Naruto-kun!" The redhead's head whipped around, suddenly acutely aware of nearly everyone in the room staring at him. Iruka-sensei continued, stone-faced. "But please leave any further introduction _after_ I'm finished talking, alright?"

Yakumo blushed, looking away and trying to make herself small even as a small grin played on her lips. Naruto glared at her, then rubbed the back of his head, his cheeks suddenly matching the hue of his hair.

"Yes, sensei. I'm sorry."

"Very well. Now, as I was _saying_ , expect to be shuffled around a lot in the coming months and years. At some point or another before you graduate, each of you will work beside everyone in this class, often several times over. It might seem inconsequential and even annoying to you right now, but learning to work side by side with different people, from different backgrounds -" He waved a hand around, encompassing in a wide gesture Clan, clanless and civilian kids alike. "- is the basics for learning the teamwork that will define and _save_ your lives for the years to come, and made Konoha the greatest of the Five Great Villages."

"My dad says it was Yondaime-sama that made Konoha the most powerful Village by kicking Iwa's ass," a clanless kid, quite big boned and with a square face, announced. The boy sitting at the next desk over, his hair shock white like snow, scrunched his finely shaped face as he turned to sneer at his classmate.

"Your father knows nothing. Hokage-sama won Konoha the last War, but it was the Senju and the other Clans who made us the greatest of the Five!"

"Why don't we ask Hokage-sama's daughter?" The big boy leaned forward perilously, and Naruto followed his gaze to a stiffening girl with blonde pigtails in the second row. Beside her, Naruto noticed, sat Karin. "Hey, Namikaze-san!"

"Silence," Iruka-sensei ground out. " Rakushi Kenta, Senju Magusa, it's clear that you already forgot every single word in last year's history class. Maybe some make-up assignments will teach you not to ignore your education."

"Aw sensei, come on, it's the first day!" The big kid groaned. The Senju quickly shut his mouth and glowered at his innocent desk, biting back a retort of his own.

"Double for you now, Rakushi, and I won't count your language because I'm feeling generous and it's the first day. You'll return here after your afternoon classes. Both of you."

Silence settled again, though the kind interlaced with half-whispered conversation. Naruto could have sworn Iruka-sensei was sighing, before his voice bounced off the walls again.

"Very well. With that out of the way, let's get back on track. You were all given your schedule, and I think a recap of where we left off…"

* * *

Naruto massaged his cramped up hand as he walked out into the chilly afternoon - Kami, it was _cold_. Wasn't Konoha supposed to be warm all times of the year? - squeezing his eyes a bit against the sunlight after hours packed into the academy's monster belly. He didn't know about the year before - his face fell a bit at the thought - but Iruka-sensei _really_ took teaching with a passion: he'd learned more about the history of Hi no Kuni, Chakra theory and the geography of the Elemental Nations - where he hadn't slept, _yet_ \- in the last six hours than in Kaasan's last week lessons.

Not that he'd ever tell her that. Nor had been the two boys bickering during the presentation the only ones to find themselves with extra workload by the time lunch rolled in.

He was glad about the whole team dynamics thingy though: it made the redhead feel less like the newcomer on his first day of academy, at least during lesson tine. Come lunch, his 'teammates' had been quick to settle in with their friends. Well, Yakumo-san had, disappearing into a gaggle of girls: Shino-san ate with only two similarly garbed children, a boy and a girl both older than him in long coats and tight bandages. From what he had seen in passing, he guessed none had spoken more than a few words. Then again, he couldn't see their lips moving, but Naruto thought they might want to be left to their own devices, and moved on.

Bento lunch box in hand, Naruto had wandered a bit in the cramped canteen, searching for familiar faces. Idate was a no go, as he was a couple years older and deeply ensconced in a group of other senpai. Also, avoiding those crowds seemed the best way to follow kaasan's first rule for now; he'd caught up a bit with his friend during midday break anyway, and they had agreed to meeting later that week at Idate's to fool around with ninja wire. Naruto grinned in anticipation.

Oddly enough, he hadn't been able to spot Sasuke anywhere near the other Uchiha students and their hidden ratios of candies, but after a good while, Karin's mop of red hair had finally caught his eye.

It had been… weird, in a way, and quite embarrassing when his cousin introduced him to the large group of kids she'd been eating with. There had been no other Uzumaki at the table with them, no other familiar faces, and while he'd sat in with the other kids and even grasped a few names, none had bothered to involve him into their conversations beyond some cursory presentations.

 _Everyone_ , however, went out of their way to involve the blonde girl sitting in the middle. Namikaze Tamako had a pleasant voice and smelled of dried, pressed flowers and rain; her shock blond hair were more distinctive than Karin's and Naruto's own red and she always seemed to be involved in two or three different conversations at the same time, Karin always a premiere speaker among them.

Weird. Maybe it was because she was the Yondaime's daughter? He had seen Hokage-sama only once, and at a fair distance at that, but she did resemble the face on the Hokage Monument quite a bit. She _also_ smiled a lot, so maybe there was that.

As he looked around now, standing in the inch deep snow in one of the courtyards behind the academy, he spotted her with her team slightly to the side. She was kicking the ground to warm herself, small puffs of breath congealing in front of her face. Naruto was doing the same to ward off the cold freezing his toes.

"Good, you're all here," a familiar voice cut through the chilly air like a knife. Their instructor appeared from thin air before them, his feet leaving naught a trace on the soft snow. "I hope you all ate well. If you haven't, well, you'll wise up tomorrow."

For the second time in a week, Naruto's jaw hung unhinged.

"Obito-nii!"

Again, a hundred pair of eyes and then some zeroed on him, and Naruto this time spotted Sasuke's onyx black eyes and duckbutt hair in their midst, mirth curling the corner of his lips upwards.

"It's Obito-sensei here, runt," the one armed Uchiha chided him with a smirk that left Naruto torn between sputtering and punching him. He stood there, hand in this pocket and waaaaay too satisfied with himself, proud as a peacock… or as only an Uchiha could be, if he borrowed one from kaasan.

The gears in Naruto's head creaked into motion, shaking off the rust and cold and producing thoughts and questions in a sputtering sequence. What was Obito-nii doing at the academy? Since when had he become a _teacher_ , of all things? Seriously, Obito-nii, a teacher? How in hell?

Beside him, Aburame shifted on his feet, and Yakumo tried to make herself inconspicuous, to little success. Naruto suddenly felt like digging himself into a hole or something under the collective gaze of his peers, and it had little to do with the heat - quite welcome actually - creeping up the back of his neck.

At the same time, however, he knew he'd never outlive Obito's teasing, and a voice in his head that sounded a lot like kaasan's was screaming at him to stop admiring his toes. Naruto forced himself to look up and hold Obito's gaze after some hesitation, lips pressing together. After a short while, filled with muttered complaints about the wait and the cold, Obito rolled his eyes and waved.

"Well, some of you already know me. Everyone else: I'm Senior Chunin Uchiha Obito, and as of today I'm taking Heda-san's place as your head instructor in Taijitsu, Bukijutsu and everything from survival training to changing each-others' diapers in the field." He rose his chin and pointed over the students' collective heads with his chin. "Over there, enjoying the last of their lunch tea are my esteemed colleagues and fellow instructors, who _better get over here quick smart,_ so that we can finally begin with your first assignments for the day."

Some exclamations followed, stressed by the cluttering of china, but a moment later half a dozen Chunin appeared with just as many swirls of wrinkled leaves and snow in an orderly line a few steps behind Obito, sporting a collection of expressions ranging from mortified to embarrassed to stoically unperturbed.

"Good," Obito nodded, his words conveying anything but. "Now that we are all here, who wants to ask the obvious question, so that we can get it out of the way and get down to work?" He scoured the assembled students, eyes shining with mad laughter behind his goggles. They stopped at Naruto for a moment, who looked back puzzled and still struggling to reconcile his nii-san with a sensei figure. "Nobody? Come on, I don't bite too much. "A hand rose up from the gaggle of students. "No Uchiha allowed, Sasuke. You know the rules."

The hand lowered, slowly, and half a dozen more shot up a moment later. Obito looked at them, then decided to ignore them and tilted his head at a boy in the second raw.

"You, Nara Shikamaru. Something you want to ask?"

Naruto was glad it wasn't him in the eye of the storm, again. The short kid with the half-lidded stare didn't seem bothered by it as he glanced up at the clear sky, hands solidly stuffed in his pockets, and suppressed a half-formed yawn.

"Not really," the boy said. Chuckles all around, but Obito fixed Shikamaru with _a look_ Naruto had seen only an handful of times from kaasan, and the cutting breeze digging in their bones and the students' shivering breathing soon became the only sound peppering the grounds. Naruto's back stiffened in reflex, and even the Nara shifted on his feet.

"Ne, troublesome…" Shikamaru muttered, to only a few, nervous smiles. "I guess the question is 'How did you score in the last three Chunin free-for-all, Obito-sensei?'?"

Obito arched an eyebrow, then snickered. "Good one. Can't have your sensei bragging too much though." He let another poignant moment pass, then shrugged at the collective silence, broken only by the impatient shuffling of feet.

"Fine, suit yourselves. Everyone, stand by you teams, and face the nearest one with your same numbers. Three by three and four by four, but it's individual sparring for now. Face each other and make space, fifteen feet between. You don't want to stumble in your friends and take a punch for them. Not by chance, at least."

There was a bit of shoving and squirreling around, though the Chunin were quick to nip any quarrel in the bud and arrange the second years across the training ground as Obito-sensei instructed, reducing distances and shuffling students around as was needed.

Naruto found himself maybe fifteen feet away on either side from Yakumo and Shino, facing a plump boy with a pleasant smile, red swirls on his plump cheeks and narrow eyes. Unlike Naruto, he wore a scarf, making him the target of his envy, and from a pocket in his pants protruded the plastic corner of a chip bag. Naruto felt his own stomach grumble a bit: distracted as he had been from his fellows at lunch, he hadn't had the time to finish kaasan's bento box.

"Ohi, I'm Choji, Akimichi Choji," the other student said, bowing a little, then plucking a chip from his pocket and munching on it with a faint smile. "You're an Uzumaki? Are you hungry?"

Naruto nodded a bow of his own, rubbing the back of his head to avoid rubbing his stomach. "Uzumaki Naruto. And yeah, I kinda am."

Choji smiled conspiratorially, dimples digging into his cheeks and broadening his already wide face. "I'll give you some when we switch around. Try to resist!"

Naruto snickered, and then Obito's voice stole across the training ground. "Good enough, but quicker next time. Now, some of you might be rusty after winter break, but I hope you still remember how to channel chakra into your bodies, else you're going to lose a fistfight with a civvie!"

Naruto's neck flushed, recalling kaasan's teasing remark just a few months back, and he fingered the scroll hanging from his belt where he'd resealed his books and lunchbox when the bell rung. Grunting, he focused, willing his charka to flow; his inner well surged in answer, invigorating his muscles and bones, popping joints stiffened by the cold. A small, radiant smile split his face as he basked in the newfound strength: he didn't even need to close his eyes this time!

Again, Obito spoke, his voice whipping the snow off the ground. "It will have to do. Three minutes sparring, then stop when I whistle. Your opponent yields? Seal of Union, and you stop. One of us instructor touches you? You stop. You use chakra for anything else than Taijutsu, or ignore a command? I'm told a jog or twenty around Konoha is lovely this time of the year. For now, use what style you're more familiar with. We'll see to turn it into something functional as we go."

The Seal of Confrontation was exchanged, then Naruto lowered himself and rose his arms in a close guard parallel to his torso, leaning on his back foot in a standard Reppan-Ryu stance. He glanced about, seeing Yarumo taking a slouched position, her shoulders trembling from the cold, while Shino settle in a wider stance, palms open to Naruto's half-serrated fists. Many seemed to mimic him.

In front of him, Choji munched on another chip to Naruto's eternal envy and prepared himself, big limbs and fists set forward, leaving much of his torso exposed.

"You ready?" Obito's tone seemed to imply otherwise. "Begin!"

* * *

At the end of Naruto's first outdoor, three-hour long lesson, which expanded from runs through the woods to physical conditioning to even more sparring, not one student produced a word as they dragged themselves to their locker rooms, bruised, tired and chilled to the bone. A lot of moans and grumbles and quite a few sneezes too went around, but nobody uttered a single coherent word, much less a question, until they were well away from the demonic clutches of the new head instructor.

A few cries of despair arose, however, as Iruka-sensei emerged from the academy's front door, not unlike an executioner, and called over the loudmouths he'd picked out earlier in the day. Pitying and pleading looks were exchanged, but there was no escaping their righteous punishment, nor Iruka's vice grip.

And so begun the bemoaned legend of Obito-sensei the Slavedriver, Bane of His Students.

* * *

"You're running the students too hard, Obito. This is a school. The parents are going to complain if they come home every day dead on their feet. Some already have already filed the forms."

"I'm sticking to the Hokage's orders, Iruka. You and them can take your grievances to him. Put them in a big red box and don't forget write ' _The Big, Bad Uchiha Cripple'_ boldly over it."

"Yondaime-sama asked you to turn half the Academy's program into a boot-camp's?"

"He said to prepare them for what's to come. All of them."

"… tone it down a peg with the small ones at least. First and second year, that's all I'm asking."

"I already am, Iruka, believe me. The Hokage wanted to send over _Kakashi_ for his sabbatical year with the rest of the surveillance detachment, as an experiment. I volunteered instead. "

"Oh, Kami."

"Not my exact words, but you got the gist of it."

* * *

Two years passed, and Naruto was eight.

The redhead stifled a yawn as he shifted his chin from one hand to the other, his eyes never leaving the tiny booklet open before him, cerulean eyes following the near illegible scribbles over and over again under a frown. He shifted in his seat, trying to find a more comfortable positions to accommodate the previous day's lingering bruises, and failed.

The classroom was nearly empty so early in the morning, save for Shikamaru, dozing off three rows down what his mother didn't allow him at home, and a few other early timers lunging about in idle chatter. Someone was playing a tune on their desk with the blunt head of a kunai, humming along.

Naruto's hand shifted to rub his shoulder, where kaasan had clipped him in their morning spars. Ever since she'd mentioned her intent to re-apply for active service in the corps two months back, Naruto had been roped in for sessions of 'family bonding', losing another thirty minutes of sleep. Thirty minutes had become an hour a month back, when Obito-nii visited, all smiles and laughter, and told kaasan how Sasuke-teme and a few others handily wiped the sparring ground with him, every time without fail.

 _Bastard._

He sighed. Sometimes he thought kaasan and Obito-nii were plotting together. Then he blinked, several instances mixing and matching together in his mind eye, each surrounded by the black cape of humiliation and physical suffering. The last piece fell and place, completing the puzzle. _Of course_ they were plotting together.

He closed his eyes at the realization that the Slavedriver probably had learned his trade at kaasan's knee, making her the sole origin of all her woes, and his surprise manifested into another half-stifled yawn. How he missed Momoko-Chan's tea in mornings like these…

Naruto's expression darkened, and the booklet grew out of focus, a lump forming and clawing at his throat from the recesses of memories. He squeezed his eyes for a long moment, taking a few steadying breaths like Rin-nee-san taught him and pushing back the distant echoes of explosions and lightning-clad swords coming for him and gigantic roots gripping at him, then opened them to a slightly less hazy world.

Not too long ago, just after the small party to celebrate Idate's promotion to Genin, kaasan had taken him to the side one evening, and finally told him that Momoko-chan wouldn't leave the hospital. Ever.

He felt a telling wetness around his eyes and he brushed furiously, hiding a sniffle behind his forearm. Blinking, he shook his head and picked up the booklet again with a glare. " _I'll become strong, Momoko-chan. Watch me."_

Fifteen minutes later the class started to fill in, the telling clacks and thuds of the double doors opening and closing to let the one hundred and something fourth years in. Naruto was tracing ghost lines on his desk with his stencil, lips moving without a sound as he repeated the instructions exposed in his booklet, trying to ignore the growing chatter and clopping of sandals as he narrowed his eyes at a particularly incomprehensible passage.

 _Why did grandmother write in chicken scratch?_

"What are you reading?"

Naruto started, and looked up to see a remotely familiar girl staring back at him, bemused. Shoulder length pink hair framed a wide forehead and large, expressive green eyes as she plopped down beside him, putting her bag up on her desk. A whiff of shichimi and flavoured pipe smoke reached him, making his nostrils tingle.

Naruto blinked, then straightened a bit, recovering from the surprise. "It's my grandma's guide on fuin. My great grandmother's, sorry." Grimacing a but, he added. "The starting volume. She's got an awful calligraphy."

The pinkette - his new teammate for the next week at least, Naruto realized belatedly - nodded, and retrieved a handful of books and notebooks from her bag, arranging them in quick order before her.

"You're taking Toki-sensei's extra-course in seals?" she asked after a few moments of lull, just as Naruto's eyes strayed back to the booklet. His head whipped around. "I don't remember you there."

"Ano, my mother teaches me that stuff. I attend Ebisu-sensei's repair course in chakra control." He rubbed the back of his head. "Mine is kind of crap."

"Really?" she said, as if it was an odd thing. In the meantime, she leafed through one of her notebooks, eyeing the watch on the wall. "Well, you're an Uzumaki right? Your mom ought to know a lot about fuinjutsu."

"You can bet she does! She's the best Seal Master in all of Konoha."

The pinkette rolled her eyes, a smile tugging at her lips. Just as she made to answer, however, another voice cut in.

"Uh-uh. Sorry, Naruto-kun, but that title belongs to Goro-sama."

Naruto smirked, relaxing back into his seat and looking up to meet Karin's probing eyes, staring down from the desk above his. He noticed his cousin was letting her hair grow, and his smirk grew more genuine. Even her, a sensor, was failing for his prank to pretty-boy Sasuke's fangirl club. Kaasan would be ecstatic. "It does, Karin-chan? Because guess who the Barrier Corps asked to revise the new Sensor Field?"

Karin's eyes widened behind her eyeglasses, then she huffed, crossing her arms across her chest. "Whatever, it's only because she's good friends with Yondaime-sama."

That earned her a confused furrow from Naruto, who straightened and turned in his seat. Kaasan was friends with the Hokage? Since when? He'd never come visiting before. And kaasan always seemed so sad, or distracted, when his name came up even in passing.

"You mother is friends with Hokage-sama?" the pinkette asked after Karin stalked away to find her new team. Naruto shrugged, failing to see the glare his teammate nailed between the Uzumaki girl's shoulder blades.

"Nah, that's new to me. Karin-chan is just fed up kaasan is better at fuin than her grandfather, Clan Head Goro-teme."

At that, the girl regaled him with a puzzled, worried look. "You know, you shouldn't be disrespectful of your Clan Head." Naruto shrugged, shoulders slouching a bit. She obviously didn't know Goro-teme. For one, he'd had never allowed Karin to visit while he'd been… away.

Even now that they'd moved closer to the Compound, kaasan and he barely spoke to each other, and kaasan had told him time and again to never speak to the Clan Head, just be polite and come get her if it happened. Naruto didn't like the Uzumaki Head's eyes, not one bit.

"Whatever, kaasan's still way better than him. Hey, is that a privacy seal?"

The pinkette's hand tightened a bit around her notebook, but she nodded. "It's just a basic design, but Toki-sensei said I'd get an extra score if I can write a working one by the end of the month." Her smile voice cracked a bit as she sent a black scowl at the guiltless pencil scrawl. "It's a… bit more complicated than I thought, really."

Naruto inched closer, peering at the incomplete seal on the girl's notebook and the scribbled notes around it. After a moment he recognized a design kaasan had taught him a few months back, joking that there was no harm in him learning a privacy ward she could get around anyway. He chuckled a bit at the memory.

"Hey, I'm no Uzumaki, but that's rude!"

Naruto blinked, finding himself pinned by the girl's glare. Quickly, he fumbled his hands up in a placating gesture. "Ano, I didn't mean - just remembered something kaasan told me. Honest. Pinky promise."

The girl's glare turned caustic, and Naruto placed a hand on his mouth, realizing his blunder. She looked away, trying to burn an hole into her notebook, and any further attempt by Naruto at mending his running tongue's damage were halted by Iruka-sensei call for order as the day's classes started.

* * *

"On your hands and toes, students! Start giving me push-ups!"

Naruto found that his hate for Obito-nii grew in tandem with his confusion at every open air session. How could the jovial, sometimes awkward man become such a merciless, unrelenting terror at the flip of a switch? Was there something in the academy's air?

Nobody hesitated, no matter how much their arms burned or how drenched with sweat their shirts grew. Two years under the Slavedriver's tender care had robbed them of any concept of defying the man's orders, to the point that the other instructors patrolled their ranks for signs of exhaustion and self-harm, carrying chakra pills and restoring beverages.

From what Naruto could see, the assistants weren't out, yet. Which, combined with the sun's position still too high in the sky, could only mean more imaginative torture at the hands of their instructor.

Still, Naruto frowned at the packed ground as his muscles strained and sweat looked on his neck and behind his ears. The morning's accident with the pinkette had evolved into a frosty cold shoulder treatment throughout classes and lunch, where she'd sat with Kiba and him without saying barely a word, and left as soon as her lunch was over.

All he'd learned was that her name was Sakura, and she was pissed at him. Royally pissed at him.

" _Hey, Sakura-chan_ ," he whispered, stealing a glance in her direction. Pink hair fell in thick, dirty bundles sticky with sweat around her face or plastered on her brow where they'd escaped her pony-tail. Her movements were growing jerky too, her arms trembling with strain. After over an hour of Obito's ministrations, it wasn't an uncommon result. Few reached the end of the three hours training ever since the madman had turned it up a notch at the beginning of the fourth year.

" _Sakura-chan_ ," he whispered again, but she kept ignoring him, staring at the ground.

" _Naruto, shut up!"_ Kiba hissed, looking around as best as he could with a wary eye. Akamaru, beside him, was sniffing the air as he lounged lazily. Stupid lucky dog. " _He will hear you!"_

"What a great pair of conversationalists we have over here," Obito announced, his voice suddenly behind them. Naruto stiffened, and Kiba almost yelped. "Everyone, thank Kiba and Naruto for the next hundred push-ups." Naruto was sure the Bastard was smiling.

Only a smattering of weak groans rose up, but nobody dared protest, though Naruto felt plenty of glares burning his way and could guess the general direction of their thoughts.

And now that show-off Sasuke was going one-handed, smug as only an Uchiha could be! Naruto grumbled, adjusted his balance and let his left arm hold up all of his weight, keeping up with everyone else's rhythm as internally he cursed every Uchiha who walked the earth since the time of the Sage.

"On your feet now, and set you weights to x0.25. Watch your chakra, or you'll dig a hole into the ground and I won't haul you out!" Naruto picked himself up with a groan, the part of him regretting the showmanship quickly pushed to the back of his mind, and channeled chakra into the gravity seal inscribed in the wristband every fourth year had been given at the beginning of the academic year. The same part of him however, the one kaasan often dubbed either 'common sense' or 'self-preservation', came back with a vengeance and stopped his hand and chakra at increasing the setting. Beside, his chakra control was crappy enough he probably was at x0.30 his weight already, if not more.

And there were the other instructors, ready to pick up those students ready to fall on their knees and curl up into a ball. Year after year, however, Naruto had seen little few resign from the academy. A dozen or so on the second year, but after that just a trickle. He could personally see why.

"By teams now, into the forest. Chop chop!"

 _Bastard._

And a great bastard Obito might be, but his methods _worked._

Naruto took off the moment the signal was given, his team being in the first wave to run one of the many obstacle courses arrayed in the spans of thick vegetation between the Academy and the Hokage monument. Kiba was hard on his heels, grinning widely, Akamaru yipping as he kept pace with his master like only a ninken could, and exhilaration coursed through Naruto at the speed he was moving. He might yet not know how to walk up and down trees, but the chakra pumping through his limbs made jumping from branch to branch all a matter of timing and balance.

He vaulted over a fallen trunk and his hands grabbed at a low hanging branch, his momentum carrying him forward. All around him, he could hear the other students running their gauntlets, see splotches of color when their paths curved and grew nearer, smell their sweat and the dozens of odors saturating the air and filling his lungs.

"Hey Naruto!" Kiba shouted over the rushing air and the crack of splintering bark. "I think we've lost Pinky!"

Naruto grumbled at the jab and the Inuzuka growled a smile full of teeth, but they both slid to a halt, Naruto almost faceplanting as a hidden root caught in his sandal. Looking around, Naruto spotted no sign of Sakura behind them, and wondered if she'd collapsed, or one of the instructors had stopped her just short of it.

"This is fuckin' bad," the Inuzuka hacked up a glob and spat it to the side. Naruto flinched. "The Slavedriver's gonna smack us if we don't get to the finishing line together."

"If he can read your lips now, Dog's Breath, he's smacking you anyway," Naruto pointed out, nudging the other in the ribs and grinning as his expression fell before he caught up and elbowed him in return. Still, Kiba was right, and Naruto chided himself for losing sight of his teammate. It had been just too good to let loose after the crappy day, but Obito-sensei wouldn't accept it as an excuse. The Bastard accepted no excuses.

"Sasuke's probably completed his gauntlet already," Kiba pointed out, sniffing the air. Naruto snickered.

"He's partnered up with Ino and Ami this week."

Kiba threw his head back and exploded into laughter. "Ah, sucks to be him. Hey, I think that's her!"

Naruto narrowed his eyes and relief broke his face into a smile that lasted barely a few seconds. Sakura wasn't running as much as she staggered forward, each few steps seeing her a little more closer to collapse. Under her hair, coated with dirt, her eyes were half lidded, glazed over, and her lips were parted in panting, but still she pressed forward.

Naruto sprinted, Kiba following a moment later, but as they closed in on her teammate, she shook her head and her body swayed dangerously at the simple gesture.

"Don't… help," she wheezed, sluggishly pushing away Naruto's offered hand. "Must do it… alone. I won't… I won't wash out."

She stumbled once more, and Naruto grabbed her by the arm when it looked clear she was headed for a face painting of dirt, mush and dry leaves. She groaned, and tried to push him away, only to manage a weak smack at Naruto's chest and fall back on her rump.

A moment later, he could hear her sniffle over her ragged breathing as she tried and failed to pick herself up. "Nonono," she babbled like a broken record, dirt coated hands leaving large prints on her face as she rubbed it. "I won't wash out. I'll be -" her breath itched. " - I'll be a kunoichi."

Naruto and Kiba exchanged a bewildered look, flushing in embarrassment, and a quick, silent conversation made of gestures and pointed glares took place between them. Moments later, it was Naruto who flipped Kiba the bird and crouched in front of Sakura.

"Hey, Sakura-chan! What's with the tears and worries? You're one of the best students in our year. You do seals on your own already!"

Kiba rolled his eyes and mock-applauded. Naruto glared, challenging him to do any better. On the ground, Sakura tried to pick herself up again, and fell back on her rump again.

"It doesn't matter," she moaned, anger and something else entering her voice. "If I can't pass the physical, they - they'll shove me into the Reserves, or in an office. I don't - I don't want to become -"

A shift in the air behind them. "Hey, what's going on here?"

The Chunin slouching a few steps away was munching on mint leaves that gave his teeth an odd green hue. A bandana kept most of his thin, pale hair out of his face, leaving only two long bangs to frame a young features, probably no older than twenty. He studied the three Genin with mild curiosity, but made no move to get closer.

"It's nothing, Mizuki-sensei," Naruto hurried up to say, "Sakura-chan stumbled, right?" he sent a pointed look to Kiba, who made a little O with his mouth and then nodded eagerly. "Right. We'll get a move on now."

"It seems to me you can't stand on your feet, Haruno," the Chunin pointed out, not ungently. "There's nothing to be ashamed of."

"No!" Naruto started at Sakura's half-shout, and Kiba took a cautious step backward. "I - I can do it, sensei." She grit her teeth and took a trembling knee, but a moment later she whimpered in frustration as the rest of her body just refused to move.

"You're exhausted," Mizuki pointed out. "You're just going to hurt yourself and accomplish nothing. Hey, Obito isn't going to chew you out because you gave your all."

Naruto nodded along. "Sensei's right, Sakura-chan. Obito-nii might act a big bastard, but he's an okay guy!"

He felt Mizuki's displeasure before he felt the glare. "Uzumaki, language. You're speaking of your teacher here."

Sakura shook her head, squeezing her eyes shut and Naruto saw Mizuki-sensei frown. "Listen, there's nothing you can do now but hold back your teammates. I'll take you back, and you can rest."

"No, t-that's not fair. I've trained, I-I…"

"We're shinobi, or at least you're trying to become one," Mizuki said. "Fairness is not in the job description."

Sakura whimpered, and Naruto suddenly felt like punching the usually amiable Chunin in the mouth. Obito too, for good measure. Instead he clenched his fist, looked at Kiba, and turned to Mizuki.

"Hey sensei, Obito said we'd just need to cross the line, all three of us right?"

The Chunin studied the three Genin for a moment, then fixed Naruto with an intent look. "Don't. Carrying her won't solve anything. Besides, she doesn't want to."

"What's the point of putting us in teams then, if we can't support each other when we need it?"

A soft chuckle wasn't what Naruto expected as an answer, but it was what he got. Mizuki waved at them before returning his hand to his pocket. "You're starting to learn then. Remember, however, that every member of the team must pull their weight."

Naruto shrugged, then grinned. "Hey, she's smarter than me. Much more than Dog Breath here, for sure."

"I'm _so_ going to crush you the next time we spar."

"Keep on dreaming, Kiba." Naruto crouched in the soft ground and gestured wildly to the other boy with urgency. "Now put her on my back, or we'll be dead last!"

"I can carry her faster than you do."

"But I can carry her longer, and we're barely mid-way. Hurry up!"

By the time they got moving, Sakura's arms safely tied across Naruto's chest with a strip of ninja tape, Mizuki had already long left.

* * *

Slipping in and out of unconsciousness and on the edge of chakra exhaustion, Sakura swore to herself one more time that she'd never be a burden again.

That she'd never be relegated to an office job and be an unhappy career genin like her mother.

That she'd see the world, and become a strong kunoichi and make her father proud.

And that she'd show Obito-sensei and the Clan bitches that she could be just as good, no, _better_ than all of them.

Sakura was already fast asleep when Naruto and Kiba emerged from the gauntlet to grasp the second to last position by the skin of their teeth.

She didn't see the boys howl with laughter as they beheld the terrible visage of Sasuke Uchiha slumped cross-legged on the ground, face in his hands and really, really trying not to set fire to the forest, where his teammates were apparently _still_ duking it out in some contest or another for his affections.

She didn't see Obito Uchiha's terrible smile as he had her teammates run the gauntlet _again_ , to teach them to respect their fellow student's woes. But she didn't see either when Obito himself carried her away from the training field to Konoha General Hospital, leaving behind a class snickering at the unfortunate younger Uchiha's expense.

* * *

 _AN: Yes, Naruto is a mommy boy, and why wouldn't he? Also yeah, Obito's slavedriving is great at shaping better physically fit Genin, but it's a nightmare for those who, even in canon, were the third or fourth wheel in that department. Enter Sakura and quite a few others too, recipients of some tough love. Big wake up call, in my opinion, but physical limitations can't be overcome with a snap of fingers._

 _Also,_ **A Glimpse of the Future:**

"And I'm going to be your sensei as well. Aren't you happy we'll stay together a few years longer?"

Silence enveloped the classroom. At last, an hesitant hand rose, quite out of character. "Sensei, he's joking, right?"

But Anko only smirked, and the Genins knew true fear.

 _Please don't forget to review if you've gotten this far. It's only fair quid pro quo. I give you enjoyment and a not-so-crappy fic, you bolster my ego._


	3. Chapter 3

_AN: Whirpools is way past 1000 views right now, and almost 300 people have read last chapter. This chapter is for all of you who fav/followed and_ _reviewed_ _. And for myself, but that's a given._

 _Also, let's take a moment to wave Canon goodbye._

* * *

Three years passed, and an eleven year old Naruto spent his (hopefully) last summer at the Academy, ticking the days off his calendar one at a time with a mixed sense of dread and excitement.

The line of ticks was still several months away from the end line in early January and the final graduation tests, but every new mark was a day less to prepare, and he still couldn't manage more than ten running steps up a wall or a tree, much less water-walking.

 _'Kaasan was right, I spent too long on great-grandma's books.'_

"Naruto."

"'Right, sorry Sakura-chan. Daydreaming."

Sakura looked at him askance, then she resumed chewing on her thumb, attacking the tender skin around her non-existent nail until the pink underneath showed. Her attention soon snapped back to the training ground, where Obito-sensei's favorite group exercise of the year, fondly renamed _King of the Hill_ , was in full swing.

In the merciless afternoon sun painting tattoos and clothes' tans on the gathered students, two teams squared off for the control of the central 'Hill', an ugly stone embankment crossed with faux fortifications and small platforms one of the Chunin instructors erected with a Doton jutsu every time. Blunted ninja tools flew, connected, clanged and clattered, intermixed with the wet, hollow whacks of taijitsu strikes, small spikes of chakra and the clashing of weapons.

No matter what the Bastard preached, there was little in terms of friendly competition on display, or any competition at all, and Naruto couldn't deny that, despite his lingering worries, the prospect had his heartbeat pick up in anticipation.

Shikamaru looked far less eager, crouched as he was in 'meditation'.

"This is going to be a pain."

Naruto nodded at the familiar remark, lip twitching into a frown at the exclamations of the crowd to a particular excellent strike on Sasuke's part that pounded Kiba into the ground, again.

As of late, Shikamaru and he had been paired up several times in the same team, even two weeks in a row now, and the redhead was slowly becoming accustomed to the limited repertoire of lazy remarks the Nara cycled through on a daily basis. Still, recurrent combinations were a tendency that Naruto observed in several other teams: less and less students were shuffled around with every week leading to graduation.

The previous week it had been Kenta and it couldn't pass quick enough, this week Sakura-chan had joined their duo instead. Shika said the instructors were solidifying what worked in advance and save themselves some work during the winter break.

Naruto didn't believe the Academy personnel shared in the Nara's brand of work ethic, but looking at the mock battle taking place, he couldn't deny some teams really had teamwork down more than others.

"Three minutes left," Mizuki-sensei announced. Naruto was sure this particular match would wrap up before that.

Each week, before the Sunday break, ten teams would be selected at random for _King of the Hill._ Obito made it clear it didn't matter who made them up, whether top students or dregs or any combination in between, or even if some were made up by four students while other followed the more traditional three. Fights were hardly fair among shinobi, he said. Adaptation was key to survival, but good teamwork could even most odds.

The game itself played by painfully easy rules. First team who could hold the Hill's Flag for ten minutes straight or knock out every member of opposing team won, and continued on the next match until they were defeated; that meant the attacking team was on a time limit to complete the exercise, either by kicking the defenders into dreamland or conquering the top of the Hill and the Flag planted there and then holding out ten minutes. The defenders, on the contrary, started with height and position advantage and only needed to hold out, but would tire with every match.

Ultimately, the team who held the longest winning streak would be declared victor, even if toppled at some point, and the last team to hold the Flag at the end of the exercise would be the first on the Hill come the following week.

Naruto himself quite preferred being the first to conquer the Hill at the beginning of the exercise, set down his traps before the Hill was too banged up, and then hold on for as long as possible. His dream scenario had been crowned in victory only once, when he'd established his personal record of six round in a row.

Results were logically very prone to ups and downs though: chances had any given student would never face the same people in the same circumstances, not with almost a hundred students rotating, and those who insisted on playing lone wolf wouldn't last long. Which was likely one of the exercise's goals.

Lately, however, it wasn't that odd to see the same people duking it out more than once; the competition, already fierce with more shifting combinations, had gone up another notch.

This week, however, Sasuke's team had pushed it to an entirely new level.

"If they win this one too, it's a new record!" someone whispered, loud enough half the class could easily hear or over the sounds of combat.

Naruto _really_ hoped that wasn't the case, but there was little point in deluding himself.

The teme's team had held the Hill since halfway the _previous_ week, and one match now from the end, they didn't look any eager to cede it to anyone.

Choji sprung back on his feet, his cheek already bruising purple, and substituted with a kunai embedded higher up on the hill as Kiba snarled and engaged Sasuke into another vicious bout of Taijutsu on the ground, cutting off the Uchiha's chase before it started.

Several steps away, an instructor picked up an unconscious Hinata and carried her away from the scuffle, but the victor of _that_ particular bout had already rerouted to intercept Choiji's advance up the Hill at a shout from Yakumo Kurama, who currently guarded the Flag for Sasuke's team.

 _"Mokuton: Anguraruutsu!"_

Choiji took all of two steps before he stumbled with a grunt, his feet forcibly detached from the Hill by thick wooden roots curling all the way up his knees, and growing still, trying to wrap him in a cocoon. Choji's hands inflated in response, five engorged fingers digging deep furrows into the Hill as the other tried to eradicate the ensnaring wood, only to find himself dangling when a kunai sliced through the roots.

"Choji, switch!"

The Akimichi nodded at Karin and thundered as fast as he could to intercept Namikaze Tamako, a bo-staff finding its way into his palms as his hands returned to normal proportions. A moment later, the Namikaze's tonfa were crossed in front of her to block an overhead bash that sent her skidding down the Hill on chakra-coated feet. Choji pressed on with a flurry and tonfa clanged with staff again as they met.

Karin jumped past them, giving the Namikaze a berth to avoid more Mokuton trappings, and run vertically up the Hill to close in on Kurama, whose hands were running through hand seals. The sequence, short as it was, was completed far ahead of the Uzumaki's approach, and Yakumo's voice, usually faint and whispery, rung clear to everyone present.

" _Magen: Kanashibari."_

Everyone waited for Karin to break stride, topple over like a frozen marionette and stay there, an altogether common result to Yakumo's Genjutsu. The redhead sped up instead, blunted kunai at the ready for a knockout as the Kurama rose slowly to unsteady feet, sweat tricking down her face from exertion.

Behind Naruto, Shikamaru sighed and resumed his cloud-watching.

Karin stumbled, her foot refusing to move, a thick root stopping her only a few steps away from her goal, then her eyes rolled in their sockets as Tamako struck at the back of her neck with a chop, rendering her unconscious and catching her before she fell. Choji reappeared in the arms of one of the instructors at the edge of the makeshift arena, his body frozen in the act of throwing a punch; the focused expression on his face was belied by his frantically moving eyes and Naruto couldn't help but snicker at it. He was joined a moment later by a slumped Karin, who was lain on the ground to recover beside Hinata, fast asleep.

The final act was punctuated by Kiba's snarling, but there was little threat to his barking: Sasuke was sitting square on his back, showing off an amused smirk as he held both dangling ends of the ninja wire tying the Inuzuka and Akamaru together for everyone to admire. The bound boy struggled to no result, only digging the blunted shuriken attached to the wire deeper into his uniform, and after a moment Obito's voice stated the obvious:

"Team Kurama-Namikaze-Uchiha wins. _Again_. Seriously, everyone, this is embarrassing." Sasuke smirked, and Obito sighed, staring at the sky for a divine guidance that refused to manifest. "We have a new record, boys and girls."

A ragged clapping cheer erupted, sincere praise and admiration tampered by envy and no little amount of hesitation at the prospect of being the next to try and meet the seemingly unstoppable team. Naruto clapped along - teme or no teme, it _had_ been quite the performance, just the last one in a long number - and to avoid the few furtive and not-so-furtive glances aimed at his own team, he turned to Shikamaru, who nodded briefly and then returned to his cloud gazing.

Naruto resisted the urge to smack him over the head and instead let out a long, harsh breath that earned him a few pitying looks.

As soon as Kiba was untied, he shoved the Uchiha's offered hand away and limped to his downed team, head hung low and teeth bared in frustration. Naruto could relate, but knew that any kind of praise at _his_ team performance wouldn't be welcome were he and Kiba in each other's shoes, so he offered none.

The Inuzuka plopped down beside a now freed Choji and as the Instructors went over the loser team with balms and Medical jutsus, Obito cleared his throat.

The excited chatter abated.

"Alright, a five minutes pause. Who wants to get started and pick apart what we've seen here?"

Students talking and out-shouting each other was a very veritable risk in a class of one-hundred, so a small forest of hands rose instead, waiting and wanting to be selected.

"The attackers let the defenders dictate the rhythm and chose who engaged who nearly from the start," Senju Magusa offered. "Rookie mistake. Hyuga and Inuzuka should have teamed-up on Sasuke first thing, take down the team's sword. Instead, Tamako had the time to turn Kiba's nose on him with that scent and then use the sleeping draught on Hinata. At that point, it was already over."

Kiba groaned and Choji hung his head, but Obito ignored him. "Good, but you can do better. Shimura?"

A dark haired girl straightened up, somber face scrunched in thought. "Hai. The defenders had good teamwork, especially Tamako-san and Yakumo-san, but they didn't exploit the terrain as well as they could have, and Sasuke-san was too far from the Hill most of the fight to fall back swiftly had the tide shifted." Her lip pursed as she tapped her chin, then shrugged and Obito called up another student.

It went on like that for another few minutes as Sasuke's team enjoyed the victor's respite before another wave, one ear to the discussion and one to themselves as they planned and plotted. Naruto saw Kurama's weariness was not a ploy by the way she guzzled down water and snuck in a chakra pill he almost missed, but Tamako and Sasuke looked far better than he hoped after nine matches in a row only that week.

The Namikaze walked in a large circle around the Flag, stopping every few steps to put her hands on the ground and set up what someone had fittingly dubbed 'Mokuton pressure snares' in frustration after one too many were sprung.

' _Talk about home advantage.'_ Everyone knew the Wood Release techniques were strengthened and easier to overpower on Konoha's grounds, courtesy of the Shodai's extensive manipulations at the time of Konoha's founding. The sentinel trees towering over the Village were proof enough of that, _and_ the most visible, but Hashirama Senju had gone quite a long way to make sure his Clan was right at home and capable of defending Konoha.

It kind of sucked when that boon was turned against him and his though.

Some considered it cheating the same way the Sharingan was considered thievery - ' _and thank Kami Sasuke has yet to awaken it, or his smugness would blot out the sun_ ' - but to the Academy rulebook, any Kekkei Genkai was just another tool, not unlike the girl's draughts or Kurama's far too effective Genjutsu. That didn't mean Naruto had to like it… but then again, moping about it would accomplish nothing.

"We stick to the plan. We hit them hard and we hit them fast, before they can put us on the defensive," he said to his teammates in a whisper, but he was looking pointedly at Sakura, who had balled her chewed hand behind her back and was now tormenting her lower lip.

"It's a long shot," said the girl, checking the kunai holster strapped to her leg. "Too long a shot. They should be more tired by now, but Tamako is still setting up traps and did you see how easily Sasuke-kun held out against both Choji and Kiba?" Her shoulders slouched and she shook her head, but the undercurrent of admiration was loud and clear to Naruto's ears, as was the sparkling in her eyes kaasan assured him was the first stages of puppy love.

Naruto pushed those thoughts back, focusing instead on the part of him that was more than glad Sasuke's team wasn't exhausted. He had wanted to test himself against the two top students in his year and the 'Genjutsu Juggernaut' at the best of their condition for a while now. This was the next best thing.

He placed a reassuring hand on Sakura's shoulder, the wiry muscle relaxing only a fraction under his touch, and grinned his largest grin. "No way we're losing this, Sakura-chan! We keep them off-balance and deny them the first move, and that Hill's already ours. Trust me!" Blind confidence was a bad thing, but Naruto preferred that the kind of self-doubt and hesitation Sakura was all too prone to.

"They may be top students, but we have better teamwork," he continued, and her shoulders relaxed a bit more. "Right Shika?"

The Nara shrugged, then sighed and stood up, popping his neck. "Whatever. If it'll work, it will work. Day's almost over anyway."

"Come on man! Where's you fighting spirit?" Shikamaru rolled his eyes in response.

"We're about to get thrashed and you don't even bother!" Sakura snapped, then turned to Naruto. "If he's like this, maybe we should..."But she cut herself off, biting down on her cheek and shaking her head.

"Forfeit looks worse on your file than honorable defeat." Shikamaru muttered, sighing at Sakura's sputtering and Naruto's glare, then he tilted his chin upwards. "It's our turn now."

"Team Haruno-Nara-Uzumaki," Obito beckoned, cutting off any further argument. The other students parted, stepped back and Naruto's team walked forward. Shikamaru still had his hands in his pants, and Sakura was no better, only hiding her nervousness behind a thin face of determination.

Naruto shooed those thoughts away. They could do this. They _had_ to do this.

"If I have to see one more of Sasuke's smug smirks," Obito informed them. "I'm going to hold you three responsible.

Sasuke, of course, smirked right back at all of them. Then Obito whistled, and _King of the Hill_ was on again.

* * *

Rin Nohara had stood beside Genma Shiranui just that morning as he waved at the retreating silhouettes of his sister and her team, on their way out of the border outpost on a routine escort mission for some local tax collector. Her first C-Rank, he had told her, and the usual small smile always present on his face had turned just a bit wider and more genuine.

Now she knelt in the cratered bog that had become that stretch of the forest, hands aglow with green medical chakra, while Genma fought like a man possessed to give her the chance to save Tenten's life.

The girl lay on a slab of stone, her skin waxy and matted with cold sweat, her lids fluttering as the eyeballs underneath darted around despite the sedatives she'd been given already. Rin had already extracted the broken chokuto blade from her lower belly and stopped the worst of the hemorrhage, but the dark sheen still coating the metal underneath the girl's blood meant poison, and that poison was currently trying to rip the genin's chakra pathways to shreds by turning her own chakra against her.

Several chained explosions - _kibakufuda_ , she noted - went off just out of sight and the forest bulged outwards, trees swaying, many uprooted by the blast. She heard a sickening thud, the echo carried by the hot air picking at her hair and carrying enough dirt and leaves to turn the wound in a worse sloppy mess. For the next few moments her ears rung as she worked to prevent that, almost drowning her own words.

"Neji, sit-rep!"

She felt the Hyuga's Byakugan activate and the boy suppressed a grunt of pain as he forced himself to stand straighter. If from skirting chakra exhaustion or his broken arm and sprained ankle she couldn't tell, and Gods preserve her she couldn't afford to care at the moment.

"Yuhi-san and Yamashiru-san brought down their opponent and remain uninjured. The explosions were Shiranui-san's work. Quite… effective."

She silently wished he'd keep to the essentials, but then again she wished she had a full back-up team of iryo-nins to multi-task on Tenten and Gai right now.

"Did they win?!" Rock Lee half-shouted, leaning against a fallen trunk with his semi-conscious sensei's head in his lap, applying pressure of the chakra bandages wrapping up the Green Beast's battered form. The man had shielded his Genins from several attacks that would have killed lesser Jonin times over and had at least two different poisons coursing through his veins… and yet, be it his impossible physical fitness or some freak mutation, he still had far better chances at survival than Tenten.

"It appears so. Shiranui-san is wounded, but moving unaided. Yamashiru-san and Yuhi-san have secured the last of the fugitives and are proceeding after the enemy shinobi."

Which meant that Genma was barreling to her position, leaving Aoba and Kurenai to fend for themselves against retreating, but extremely dangerous Ame shinobis with a penchant for poisons she had no antitoxin for. He wanted to be close to his sister, but he was in no condition to provide anything but a distraction.

And Tenten was dying. She couldn't afford any more distractions.

 _What kind of Hunter-Nin uses a degenerative chakra toxin against a fucking child?_ Rin wanted to scream as her Mystical Palm failed to contain and reverse the damage and spread of the toxin, already slowed down as it was by Neji when he shut all the tenketsu around the injury.

Rin was sure that had the Hyuuga showed less initiative or skill, the girl would already be dead. He'd probably receive a field promotion to Chunin, considered he'd also held out with a disabled Jonin-sensei and a critically wounded teammate while the Akatsuki remnants and the Ame hunters razed half the forest around them, but that hardly mattered in the face of Tenten's wounds, her pierced uterus, nicked spine, and _the thrice-damned poison_!

Something stirred in her gut and Rin found herself wanting to go out there and cut the damned Ame hunters to pieces, then have the Akatsuki stragglers, those impudent, trespassing brats, watch and beg and _scream_ as she came for them too, one at a time until they wished Hanzo the Salamander had gotten to them first!

 _'Never lose control, turtle girl. The seal is just ink on skin: you are your first and last line of defense.'_

Ibiki's ghost words, etched in her psyche as a lasting, conditioned warning, burned the mounting rage away and brought much-needed clarity to the fore. Or maybe they didn't, but turned the insanity to more productive uses.

"Rock Lee, intercept Genma-san and tell him to assist Aoba-san and Kurenai-san. Stress it's an _order_ from his squad leader, and that Tenten will live." The boy's eyes went as wide as plates under the ridiculous bowl cut, darting briefly to his downed teammate before returning to her, and he stammered something along the lines of _Gai-sensei_ …

" _Now!_ "

"Y-Yosh!" Rock Lee disentangled himself from his sensei and shot out like he had a demon on his heels. She waited until he was out of earshot, then turned to Neji. He beat her to the punch.

"Tenten is dying," he said with no inflexion, the veins around his pale eyes bulging, but his voice carried a certainty that stemmed from an unwavering confidence in what he said.

"She won't," Rin ground out, and her annoyance at the genin's cockiness tipped the scales. One hand went to her belly and blue chakra enveloped her fingertips, trembling only for a moment before steadying. She knew that was going to hurt and it'd be worse than the time before, because every time it was worse than the time before that and she knew one day it wouldn't be bearable any longer… but she'd never forgive herself if she let Genma's sister die.

"If her fate is to succumb, there's nothing you can do but accept it. Can Gai-sensei afford to wait for you to accept the inevitable?."

Obito's nindo on trash echoed like a bell chime in her head, steeling her resolve as she felt the seal on her belly flare and _rotate._

She couldn't extract the poison from Tenten without extracting the chakra it used as a conduit as well, and there were no batteries nearby to provide safe storage. Letting it dispel into thin air would only poison anyone nearby now that the toxin had been activated by merging with Tenten's chakra. Finally, her oaths as an iryo-nin also stopped her from using Neji as the receiver - she squashed _that_ thought as not entirely her own -, which limited her options to channeling the tainted chakra into herself to save her patient.

Or into something that could deal with the poison because it was itself so much worse, it wasn't even funny.

"What you're about to see is a S-rank secret under Konoha's -" was all Rin managed to say before the pain flooded over and into her and every nerve in her body flared as the youkai stabbed at her like a thousand coralline spears trying to rip her apart at the seams. Her hands locked up, her back stiffened to the point she thought it would snap her in half and her throat let out a cry that was more akin to the growl of a rabid god.

But Rin's hands didn't waver and the seal didn't rotate any further than she wanted it to, no matter the roar of a thousand oceans urging, compelling her to; youkai chakra inundated her own pathways, but rather than shred and tear it carpeted every inch of in a protective cocoon, and barely a wisp escaped from her tenketsu.

As Tenten's corrupted chakra passed into her and disappeared further into the seal, Rin's awareness of her surroundings dimmed, and then she was floating above a vast, boiling ocean. A single, red eye locked on her and she felt its hate at being used as a chakra sponge as if it were her own, but the bars of a gigantic cage, rusted and chipped and bent as they were, and the tiny strip of paper still stood between them. Rin was more than content to leave the Sanbi smoldering behind it.

 **YOU WILL COME TO ME AGAIN, TURTLE GIRL.**

 **AND AGAIN. AND AGAIN.**

 **AND THEN I'LL BE FREE.**

* * *

The moment the whistle found his lips and the first note shrieked Sasuke darted down the Hill, every inch his team's sword. Then smoke bombs went off all around Naruto's team, engulfing them in moments.

Grinning, Obito activated his Sharingan and leaned back to enjoy the show.

* * *

Atop the Hill, her back to the Flag, Yakumo Kurama's hands stopped mid-seal as her target disappeared from sight.

She narrowed her eyes, but the purple smoke was thick and pushing forward enough to pause Sasuke. Her teammate dug two handfuls of training shuriken from his pouches and waited, arms coiled. Yakumo exchanged a glance with Tamako twenty feet below her: the other girl shrugged, then hung her tonfa and palmed kunai of her own.

Sakura was the first out of the smokescreen, far to Sasuke's right where Sakura should have been, but disappeared a moment later when another smoke bomb went off, then another. Sasuke didn't waste his shuriken, and Yakumo held her genjutsu at the ready.

Naruto jumped in the open on the other side of the smokescreen, throwing metal at Tamako's platform. The Namikaze deflected and dodged, then Sakura shot out of the smoke in Taijitsu range from Sasuke. Yakumo completed the last seal and whispered.

 _"Magen: Narakumi."_

Yakumo felt the Hell-Viewing technique wrap around Naruto and twist his senses with his own fears. Tamako took his stumbling as her cue and raced through hand-seals. Sasuke, shuriken dropped, settled into an Interceptor Fist stance to meet Sakura's kick.

Then the Genjutsu unraveled by the seams and Naruto was moving again.

 _'Wha - but he -'_

Yakumo's eyes widened, her head whipped around to see Sasuke push Sakura's leg aside and move into her guard. Then he froze, dropped his guard, raised his hands above his head and started spinning in place.

Sakura's face split into a full grin that was _so_ not-Sakura. Yakumo boggled, then saw the shadow, snaking under the smoke and half hidden in Sakura's own, touch Sasuke's own.

' _Oh Kami, the Nara!'_

The pinkette reached into her weapon pouch and produced a seal tag and two kunai. The grin widened, turned predatory.

"Tamako!"

The blonde's hands slammed into the ground.

 _"Mokuton: Anguraruutsu!"_

Roots as thick as Yakumo's arm exploded from the ground, twisting and searching… and headed for the charging Naruto.

"No Tamako! That's Sakura!"

Her hands were moving as she shouted, but so was the henged Naruto. Another smoke bomb dropped and engulfed Sasuke. The last she saw of him was Naruto-as-Sakura slapping the tag on his forehead and the faint signature she'd grown sensitive to in two weeks of daily joint training was snuffed out.

 _'How? A suppresion tag?'_

Tamako's roots raced for Sakura-as-Naruto. They turned with every near miss and the Henge shimmered. The now-revealed pinkette dodged and weaved, then yelped as one snatched her by the waist from mid-air. More moved in, then the real Naruto erupted from the smoke , running up the Hill and throwing both kunai before Yakumo could complete her seals.

She deflected the first and ducked under the second. Naruto grinned again, pushed himself away from the Hill and Sakura covered her eyes. Yakumo's zeroed on the tags wrapped against the kunai handles.

" _Fuin: Kai!_ "

White filled her vision, harsh and _burning_. Yakumo cried, tears running down her cheeks as she blinked, but the white only shattered into dancing, swirling spots. She felt her hands rubbing on her face, but for the life of her she couldn't _see_ them.

Someone cursed. A lot of someones cheered and shouted. From a great distance, she felt the air shift behind her and tried to turn, hands rising in blind defense.

She was out before she touched the ground.

* * *

The moment he slapped the chakra suppression tag on Sasuke's forehead and he stopped struggling against Shikamaru's Kagemane, Naruto knew they had it.

Smoke engulfed them and Naruto let his nose lead him as Shikamaru stopped fooling around and led the teme further into the smokescreen. Naruto didn't need the Sharingan to burn the Uchiha's expression into his mind. His grin widened.

Sakura was herself again and cutting wildly at roots with her kunai when the smokescreen parted around him, the thick one around her waist holding her in the air. Naruto nodded at her, then made for the Hill, focusing chakra on his the soles of his feet.

Three steps up, Tamako was moving to incercept him. Four steps, he palmed the two kunai with the flashbang tags. Five steps, and he threw them at Yakumo's general direction.

He managed eight before he had to push himself away or slid down. For long moments he felt weightless, suspended in the air before gravity reasserted its rule.

In that moments he made a single seal, grinned and shut his eyes.

 _"Fuin: Kai!"_

Yakumo cried as he landed, and Naruto cursed. He looked up at the girl covering her weeping eyes and he was suddenly sure he had messed with the seal.

 _'No, kaasan checked them. Minimal charge. It's only temporary.'_

Tamako stopped halfway between Sakura and him, cerulean eyes finding the Flag and her teammate, then Naruto and the smokescreen behind him. She looked torn for a single moment, then her hands started going through the seals for the Kawarimi.

 _'Oh no, you don't.'_

Without their mistresses' directing them, the roots had stopped, allowing Sakura the head start she needed to complete the technique before Tamako.

She substituted with the kunai Naruto hadn't detonated, a short distance behind Yakumo, but well within the circle of traps that no roots exploded upwards. Then Naruto's attention was all on Tamako as he tackled her to the side of the Hill with a chakra-propelled jump.

 _'Sakura has the Flag. Shika can hold Sasuke for half an hour as long as the tag is on him. Only one left.'_

But he needed to get the Namikaze away from the Hill, the Flag and those traps. Also, she could wall-walk, and he could jump at best.

The tonfa slamming into his side drove the considerations out of him. Those were followed a moment later by his breath as she double-kicked into his chest, but Naruto grabbed at her ankles, coated his feet with chakra as he gulped down his breakfast, and pulled.

Everyone knew Sasuke was the top male student for his speed, Taijutsu and Katon, while Tamako reigned on the girls with technique, chakra control and Mokuton.

But nobody argued either that Naruto was the second strongest student, and that on a good day he could stall Choji at arm wrestling.

So when he pulled, muscles straining and joints popping under the deluge of chakra he poured through his limbs, he overcame the thin layer of chakra coating Tamako's hands and back that kept her stuck to the wall. Then the Namikaze was plummeting towards the ground, Naruto hard on her tail.

She righted herself before landing and Naruto crossed his arms as he fell into her meeting tonfa strike. Naruto skidded into a crouch, the muscles in his shoulder and upper arm numb, and swept her legs as he pumped chakra to awaken the muscles again.

She jumped over his leg, then a tonfa came down on his other shoulder, her other hand reaching for a pouch. Naruto stepped into the strike, slapped her arm away by the wrist and shoulder-checked her in the chest. Tamako stumbled, he followed up with a kunai trust at the pouch where she kept her draughts and senbon. She turned the stumble into a back-roll towards the Hill and Naruto hesitated, Hinata's demise flashing in his mind eye, then threw the kunai and rolled sideways.

The senbons flew an inch above him and a Chunin plucked them from the air before they reached the other students. Naruto jumped on his feet again, only to find Tamako in his face, her own a scrunched mask of concentration.

His knee came up as he leaned back from her tonfa, then her other hand snaked in, twin senbon protruding like claws. He continued backwards, his sandal coming up to kick at her wrist, then he stopped on a handstand and pushed himself up to avoid her sweeping leg.

The air rushed from his lungs and he tasted bile when her following kick dug into his stomach. Naruto crashed on the ground and bounced, but on the second spin he was on his feet, arms crossed to defend himself and the fading smoke lapping at his back.

Tamako sped past him, throwing two shuriken that cost him precious seconds to deflect. Naruto cursed: the smokescreen was fading and he could see Shikamaru's and Sasuke's silhouettes already. By the time he gave chase, Tamako was two thirds of the way there.

Shuriken cut through the smokescreen. Tamako dodged to the side and rolled, coming up palming two more senbons and cocking to throw at the now visible Nara.

" _Magen: Kanashibari!_ "

Naruto stumbled, but it was Sakura who spoke, and Tamako who froze mid-throw. The Uzumaki tried to shrug the sudden weight turning his limbs into lead, then his eyes noticed the thin, crimson line running along his forearm.

' _Oh… fuck me.'_

"Naruto! Hurry up!"

Sakura was kneeling atop the Hill, her shoulders trembling as she held Tamako still, but the Namikaze was starting to shake it off already. Naruto grit his teeth against the wool stuffing his head and drew more and more chakra from his reserves, pushing it through his pathways until his limbs hurt and his nails left crimson half-moons into his palms, but he could move again.

A burst of speed carried him forward and he locked eyes with slouched Sasuke for a moment. The Uchiha was _glowering_ and though his vision was getting a bit woozy, Naruto thought he saw several people snickering in the students' lines.

' _Obito will probably have them run the gauntlet just for empathy's sake. Who cares.'_

The handle of his kunai impacted behind Tamako's ear, and her body slackened even if the jutsu kept her standing like a puppet. A moment later Sakura stopped feeding it chakra and Tamako crumpled onto a heap.

Naruto kept standing by willpower alone, panting and sweating as Obito walked into the training ground, eyes a Sharingan crimson. He studied the seal on Sasuke's forehead for a moment, earning himself a dose of teme-glare, then nodded to himself.

"Team Haruno-Nara-Uzumaki, you have the Hill. Well done!"

Naruto pumped his fist into the air. "We did it, 'ttebayo!"

Then he promptly fainted.

* * *

October 8th came and went for Sasuke Uchiha like many others before: a quick prayer at the Naka Shrine, morning training with otou-san, a long day at the academy reinforcing his position as the top student of his year – one-time incidents didn't count -, a small visit home to refresh himself… and then an entire evening at the dobe's birthday party.

Kushina-san had gone overboard, as usual, and almost a third their class was assembled on the back garden of the dobe's home, just outside the main compound. Orange paper lights adorned the trees covered in flowering hardenbergia climbers and cast warm light on the many shrubs of luculia, cyclamen and lavender, making for a nice background.

Really, the dobe should have become a gardener with the Yamanaka rather than try and be a shinobi: the blooming winter garden made it clear where his talents lay.

Sasuke himself had been more interested in the many non-academy guests in attendance though, so much he'd earned a reproach or three from kaasan that left him miffed, but feeling more than justified. He'd given the dobe his present, let Kushina-san ruffle his hair and even half-complimented him on his performance at the last _King of the Hill._ Sort of, his side was still bruised from that kick of his.

After that, he felt completely justified in pursuing more interesting company.

The other adults fell easily in that category, but none more so than the Morino. The younger brother, fifteen by his judgement and quite stocky for a Genjutsu-heavy Chunin, had spent most of the evening playing with the younger children that inevitably popped up at such events. A shame, but the elder one… Sasuke had been equal parts terrified and excited to approach the towering, scarred bear of a man lingering in the outskirts and engaging rarely in conversation, obviously preferring the company of his drinks.

He had made sure his face showed neither when he finally made a move to approach him. Or, at least, he tried.

A single glance from those heavy set eyes seemed to drill into his soul and pick apart his deepest secrets at his leisure. He was kind of proud to say he'd withstood the visual onslaught for the better part of a minute despite the ice shooting down his spine. Then caution reared its head from where he'd buried it, and he walked away to less troubling shores.

Despite the minor setback, he honestly couldn't say he didn't enjoy himself: the food was good - someone obviously kept Kushina-san away from the kitchen - there were onigiri with okaka and tomato sauce, and it being Naruto's birthday there weren't too many of the annoying kunoichi-wannabes that often pestered him.

Tamako Namikaze was another glaring absence, but it wasn't the first time and he'd noticed nobody really brought that up anymore. The rumor mill - in the form and voice of Yamanaka Ino - had it Kushina-san and Senju Aiko couldn't stand each other, but Sasuke didn't really care.

On the other hand, Obito's change of attitude when his iryo-nin teammate arrived halfway through the evening had been terrifying.

How did Kushina-san put it? ' _They've been dancing around each other since they were in diapers. Completely ridiculous'_ , or something equally disturbing. Kaasan had laughed with her old teammate though, so that was good.

And all in all, Obito wasn't half bad as a teacher, despite being a cripple. That he would turn into a fool the moment the Rin woman stepped into his sight, however, was demeaning for every Uchiha. To think he'd even started to respect the man somehow, despite otousan's admonishment.

Still, despite the not-so-unpleasant company, coming back to the Uchiha Compound couldn't be soon enough. Sasuke left kaasan at the entrance and covered the distance between the gates to the inner lodgings quickly, the faint sense of unease that bugged him for the entire day growing to be more than an insufferable itch at the base of his neck.

A clan guard was posted in front of Itachi's personal quarters, separated from the rest of the Clan for meditative purposes. Just one of his prerogative as Clan heir, but one that always annoyed Sasuke.

"Ushiro-san." The man dipped his head in response.

"Good evening, Sasuke-kun. Itachi-dono is resting."

Oh, how he wished his Sharingan had already awakened. It was the last step between him and becoming a full clansman, and it couldn't come too soon. Just hearing the respectful _san_ after his name, rather than the childish, condescending _kun_ would be worth the effort.

Sasuke nodded. "How is Itachi?"

Ushiro smiled in sympathy, and Sasuke knew something was off. "He's recovering quickly. But I think Fugaku-sama will tell you more at home, Sasuke-kun. He was here not too long ago."

Sasuke looked at the closed door, maybe a bit too long if he had to be honest. His chances to slip past the guard didn't look good, and what if Itachi was indeed resting? Sasuke sighed and bid Ushiro goodnight.

The cobbled streets were empty of any clansmen and only faint light from the Naka shrine indicated anyone else was up and about. Probably some late-night prayer: a few clansmen shinobi had trouble sleeping at times, and the Shrine was a favorite spot of many.

He hurried past it, heading home as fast as he could without breaking into a run. Kaasan had told him to be quick, as it was already well into the night, but if he was lucky otousan would be still awake and willing to finally tell him _something_ about Itachi.

Itachi had come back two weeks before from some ANBU assignment, but what he'd seen first time he was allowed into the hospital was a recurring sight in his sleep. Sasuke shivered. He'd never seen Itachi so beaten - he'd never seen Itachi beaten at all -, broken bones in slings and body covered in chakra bandages. Several machines and fuin arrays had been arranged all around his bed, plastic tubes and VI emerged from the gaps in the wrappings.

Itachi himself had been barely conscious and clearly delirious, so much kaasan had led him away not five minutes in.

It was still hard to wrap his head around it, so hard his mind refused to accept it even after weeks. That was Itachi! His niisan couldn't be defeated! Not Itachi who'd made ANBU Captain at thirteen and was considered the greatest Uchiha genius since the times of Madara and Izuna. Not Itachi, who otousan always said one day would be Godaime Hokage, nor Itachi who'd awakened the Sharingan at seven.

And yet the vacant, empty look on his bandaged face he would see every day at the hospital had been that of a broken man. Itachi had struggled to even talk when kaasan and he visited, often stopping mid-sentence and staring past them at something nobody could see. Other times he'd startled when Sasuke or kaasan entered, and the slings holding his hands and arms creaked as he tried to move, as if to try and touch them.

Later, he'd overheard two of the doctors say he'd been the only one of his unit to return. Sasuke wasn't sure otousan knew that, but he was pretty sure he hadn't been supposed to hear any of that.

And otousan was worried, Sasuke could see it on his face when he spoke with kaasan or Kagami-dono. Itachi's confinement to his quarters once he'd been dismissed from the hospital a few days before only made it more obvious something was going on. Nobody beside otousan and the iryo-nins had been allowed inside to see him. Not even he, or Shisui.

The light in otousan's office was out when Sasuke arrived at home and kaasan coaxed him to bed shortly after.

"Your father is out on Clan business, Sasuke-kun. Sleep: he'll be here in the morning."

Sasuke ended up staring at the wooden beams above him for a long time, his futon itching against his skin and wrapping around his legs as he shifted and tossed.

At some point he must have fallen asleep however, because the next thing he knew he wasn't alone in his room any longer, and cries of alarm cut through the night by the dozen.

Sasuke shot on his feet and reached for his weapon pouch, or at least he tried to. A bony hand closed around his shoulder like a vice and pushed him flat on the futon. Sasuke snarled, fist flying, but then the fight went out of him when he locked eyes with Itachi crouching above him.

His brother's eyes were wide, spinning with a Sharingan like the turning blades of a fan. Light and shadow danced on his face from the open window and Sasuke felt a distant heat on his skin and into his chest when he breathed. Then something sticky and wet dripped on his cheek, and Sasuke recognized the feeling from one too many broken noses.

Blood. Blood streaked Itachi's face, flowing from his right eye down to his chin, and from there dripped on Sasuke's own face as Itachi loomed over him.

"They don't understand. Father, Kagami, Shisui… none of them does. They think they know the truth." It took a moment for Sasuke to recognize the gurgling wheeze as his brother's voice. "They won't listen, but I saw it all, the Sage knows the truth has been tampered with. You must listen, Sasuke. You must See, and you must understand."

Sasuke's voice died in his throat, then his head spun and he was no longer in his room. No, he was staring at the moon as it shattered and then formed again, the pieces slotting together to suffocate a thousand million voices singing, screeching praises in a thousand different tongues.

"Some things must remain hidden, not be rediscovered," Itachi's disembodied voice said. "We're walking to our doom and our Sight is blind, cheapened and sold."

The moon vanished, the voices fell silent and Sasuke was back in his room, his body numb and shivering, but he couldn't help but _see_. Itachi, the hospital scrubs dangling on him like a scarecrow's, bones jutting out beneath his paper-thin skin, loose bandages picked by the wind and floating around him like tails. The blood dribbled from his chin and Sasuke followed a single drop falling in slow motion into his lap.

Only then he saw his hands were clasped around something. His fingers were numb as they brushed the red from the unblemished hitai-ate. Even there, he recognized Itachi's beyond any doubt.

And then Itachi was at the window, standing against the light streaming in from outside. "They will come for you, Sasuke. _He_ will come for the Uchiha, because we are sinful and faulty in his eyes and he can't stand our existence. You must be strong."

"You must be ready to stand by your own. Don't repeat Madara's mistake."

And then Itachi was gone and Sasuke saw smokeless black flames burn darker than the night they stood against. A hundred black, swirling tongues of fire immolating the very ground where the Naka Shrine once stood.

He didn't know how long he watched the flames, enraptured and unable to move, his body shaking and reeling from the images Itachi carved into his brain, before someone found him, Itachi's hitai ate still clutched in a death grip.

But the next time he closed his eyes against the white of the hospital and the kind smile of Inoichi Yamanaka, the black flames continued to dance against his eyelids, as vivid as if they were still before him.

* * *

 _AN:_

 _Mokuton: Anguraruutsu no Jutsu (Wood Release: Underground Roots) – C Rank_

 _Magen: Kanashibari no Jutsu (Genjutsu: Temporary Paralysis Technique) – D Rank_

 _Magen: Narakumi no Jutsu (Genjutsu: Hell Viewing Technique) – D Rank_

 _Ninpo: Kawarimi no Jutsu (Substitution Technique)_

 _Now, do you remember when I said almost 300 people viewed last chapter? Good, because only_ _4_ _reviewed. Come on guys, the math is depressing. More so since this story's favs and followers_ _more than doubled_ _since I uploaded chapter 2. If you've spent 15 to 20 minutes reading a chapter, what is one more to drop a few lines to the me, the writer? Especially if there's stuff that's not clear to you._

' _Till next time,_

 _Alexeij_

 _P.S. Thanks to the guys at DLP's for providing feedback on this._


	4. Chapter 4

They stood at the edge of the glassed crater, one a few steps behind the other. Father and son. Patriarch and Clansman. Each breath was a gulp of hot coals down his throat, no matter how many days had passed since Itachi appeared in his room, but Sasuke endured without a flinch. The man giving him his back wouldn't abide any show of weakness.

"His name has been struck from the Clan's archives and the genealogy. You are not to pronounce it or make mention of it with anyone, inside or outside the Clan. You are not to discuss his deeds, mention his words or reference him in any other way than Kinslayer and Blood Betrayer."

"But Itachi would never -"

"Sasuke." It wasn't his tousan who pronounced his name like a warning, like the sharp point of a nail preceding the fall of the sledgehammer. It was Uchiha Fugaku, Head of Konoha's Military Police. Uchiha Fugaku, who'd barely escaped the black pillar of fire with his life, where Sasuke's granduncle Kagami and many more of the Elders had not.

The correct answer slipped out quick enough after that realization.

"… Yes, sir."

"Tomorrow I will announce you as Clan Heir, Sasuke. In addition to your new duties as a full clansman, you will start training with me and the rest of the Elite Jonin. Failure or anything less than excellency will not be tolerated."

"Yes, sir."

"The future of the Uchiha rests on your shoulder now, son. Our ambition, our right." Then, Fugaku turned, and fixed him with spinning Sharingan wheels. "Make us proud, Sasuke. Become what your foolish brother could not."

"… Yes, sir."

* * *

The kunai traced a thin line along the side of her flak jacket and Kushina shifted, channeling her momentum into an elbow strike at Mikoto's jaw. The Uchiha's arm snaked around her blow, deflecting the force upwards, then her knee raced for Kushina's gut. Her elbow slugged it midway, then Kushina almost stumbled when Mikoto disappeared in a seal-less Kawarimi, only to spin and block Mikoto's flying axe-kick with her crossed arms.

Her shoulder exploded with pain, the ground under her feet cracking. Kushina rolled under Mikoto following downward stab, stopping her chakra flow for a split second before forcing the pathways open again. The genjutsu concealing Mikoto's real position slid from her senses and she came up swinging as the Uchiha blinked inches to the right. Kushina parried, feinted left, juked right, faked a left uppercut to the liver that merely brushed Mikoto's shin block then followed with a right haymaker that turned into a jumping elbow strike to the head.

Mikoto ducked and weaved, her spinning Sharingan allowing for close but controlled dodges. She leaned back and sprung up again, two quick palm strikes displaced the air in front of Kushina's face. She grabbed at the second, pulling it forward as she drove a elbow into Mikoto's sternum, then twisted Mikoto's wrist and threw the Uchiha over her shoulder, slamming her into the ground, twisting her hips to increase the power behind the throw.

The Uchiha cushioned her fall into a one-handed stand and kicked at her chest from the ground, then their eyes met again. Kushina grunted and backpedalled, almost stumbling due to Mikoto's genjutsu messing with her inner ear and balance.

Rather than force herself to stand she let herself collapse, cutting her chakra as she touched the ground, and Mikoto's kunai thrust missed her by inches. Kushina swept at the Uchiha's legs, chakra surging anew, then pushed herself up and met Mikoto's flying flurry with her elbows, bashing her strikes aside. Powering through an opening, Kushina shifted into the other's guard as the Uchiha landed and took a punch to the ribs to clip Mikoto in the jaw.

The Uchiha's head snapped back and she went flying, only to right herself mid-air and land in a crouch, kunai at the ready in a reverse grip in front of her.

Mikoto wiped the blood from her broken lip and massaged her jaw as Kushina rubbed her lower ribs, then gave her shoulder a few tentative rolls.

 _'Reserve Corps teacher my ass.'_

"That Sharingan is still an hack, teacher's pet."

"You're one to speak, habanero," Mikoto chuckled softly, small puffs of cold air marking every word in a greyish cloud hovering in front of her face. "You aren't even sweating, and you still hit like a lumberjack."

"Motherhood becomes me."

Mikoto arched an elegant eyebrow in a picture-perfect rendition of the trademark Uchiha silent deadpan. Kushina burst out laughing.

"I swear, you're becoming more like Fugaku every day," she accused her former teammate after she'd composed herself. Mikoto, high class lady that she was, had waited patiently, not a hair out of place in her expression of amused rebuke.

"One of us ought to be the adult."

Kushina shook her head, a warm feeling spreading into her chest at the familiar barb-trading that had been a constant fixture in her Genin and early Chunin days. Before the War took Yuhi-sensei, father and mother. Before Ibiki disappeared in the meanders of the human mind to torture his own ghosts; before Mikoto got married and she met Minato during that running battle with Kiri that almost ended in complete disaster.

It shouldn't have taken Itachi's defection to bring the them back together, just the two of them outside the constraints of the Academy, children and social calls.

"Bibiki-kun fills the quota already. He can scowl black enough for all of us."

Mikoto chuckled as she stretched, her neck popping audibly, then her voice shook with mock reprimand. "You know he hates that name."

Kushina's face split neatly in a conspiratorial grin. "Imagine if they knew it at T&I. He's mind-fucking some poor sod into the next stage of madness when one of his boys comes calling. 'Bibiki-san, the Hokage wants you to make the Kiri ambassador crap his pants!'"

"You're hopeless. And vulgar. I fear for poor Naruto-kun: he's such a lovely boy, but her mother has the finesse of charging bear."

Kushina thanked the Gods Mikoto's eyes had returned to their standard ink black, or she'd have seen her swallow her first comeback and laugh just a bit too hard to silence the spike of shame knifing her stomach like an bot kunai. The lungful of cool winter air helped quell that, if only a little bit.

"Keep your hands off my baby boy, you horrible woman!"

Mikoto balked in surprise, then smiled a little, evil smile not really befitting an Uchiha Matriarch. It had just a tad too much of Ibiki into it for Kushina's comfort. She found herself mirroring it.

"I think we're done with the warm up, habanero. Ninjutsu as well this time?" Mikoto said. Her kunai disappeared, replaced by twin steel-toothed fans in red and white.

Mikoto's Sharingan spun to life again. Kushina dispelled the first genjutsu twisting her hearing before even replying, then four Mikoto materialized where one had only been before.

The Uzumaki cracked her knuckles and readied her chains, her senses following the real Mikoto trying to flank her. "Don't worry, I'll hold back. Wouldn't want the mighty Uchiha Clan to need another training ground after I'm done with you."

"Please. You forget what my Clan's signature jutsu is. This one?" One of the four illusions gestured at the cozy little field around them, cracked and dug through, a smattering of snow compacted into footprints or sprinkling the extensive scorch trails blackening the soil in long, crisscrossing lines. A mid-morning northern breeze picked at Kushina's ponytail and rippled the flat surface of a nearby pond, sending gentle waves lapping at the melting snow on the bank. "It won't last more than a couple of months, at best."

There, in the lingering look even her illusions cast at the scars of put down fires, Kushina spotted the regret, sadness and pain her friend kept so well in check under a familiar mask of familiar elegance and composure. That Mikoto felt the need to even around her was a knife gutting into her belly, but she had already decided she wouldn't address the elephant in the room until Mikoto did first.

Instead, she powered through the building awkwardness.

"My, my. Must cost a pretty ryo to pay the Senju to refurbish it every time."

The Mikotos huffed, then they were moving. So did the fifth. Kushina grinned.

The approaching chakra signature stopped them dead only a couple steps away from resuming where they'd left minutes before. Neither Kushina nor Mikoto possessed a sensor's attunement and while both their Clans provided them with the means to compensate that to an extent, Yuhi-sensei had been a fanatic of old school chakra control exercises, a policy both had never abandoned.

So when the clansman emerged seamlessly from a Shunshin, alighting their senses with a momentary burst of chakra before it slammed back into the man's coils, he found both Jonin waiting for him, genjutsu dispelled but still giving each other the battle eye..

Kushina fixed the Chunin with a rather displeased look, quite upset at being interrupted after having riled up the usually gently unflappable Mikoto. No-name Uchiha was just under twenty, standard Uchiha pretty-boy model, but the cool and aloof mask that usually came with the package was cracked by solitary beads of sweat running down his temples.

"Mikoto-sama, I beg your pardon, but Sarutobi-dono is at the gate, and he's asking after Kushina-san."

* * *

Kneeling in the shadow of a porch, a low square table the only thing between her and the Sandaime wasn't Kushina's exact idea of a friendly morning of catching up and outdoor exercise.

With a polite bow that had her yukata shuffle and crease, the Sarutobi Clan retainer set the steaming cup of tea in front of her with a clink of china, then disappeared back into the complex on light steps. The muffled clack of the sliding door announced their returned privacy, then the sizzling of a tiny flame and the distant tang of smelly tobacco told her that no, the Professor's intent was still to have smoke accomplish what countless shinobi did not.

Bamboo clunked hollowly against a flat stone, rocking up and down under the trickle of a waterfall, a faint background sloshing. Once, twice, a third time, the slow rhythm mirrored Sarutobi's smoky exhales in front of her. Inside the house, the soft plodding of bare feet came and went. In the distance, a boy laughed.

Her eyes didn't stray from the kanji brushed oh-so-perfectly onto the heavily adorned scroll in her hands for a long time.

"A royal weasel from the Line of Sabaku delivered it this morning," Hiruzen supplied the obvious unhelpfully. "Suna has a Rokudaime Kazekage."

"Good for them. Could teach Kiri a thing or twenty," Kushina managed, loud enough for Sarutobi to hear and possibly answer, giving her precious long seconds to compose herself. "She's quite sketchy on the fate of the Godaime asshole and his many supporters."

"She is, and we currently have no real mean to ascertain what is true and filter what's not." The former Hokage fixed her with a shrewd look she found had lost little of its sharpness or weight, even with his balding head exposed and the liver spots now basking in the winter sun. "Which brings us to the here and now, and why Minato's asking you to volunteer for this mission."

An S-rank then. The request on the missive could be assessed as nothing lower, really. She wouldn't have been given the a scrap of a choice otherwise, illusive as it was with Sarutobi leading the negotiation. "Naruto is graduating in three days. You both know that."

Hiruzen nodded solemnly, a kind, a grandfatherly smile spreading behind the mouthpiece of his pipe. "You would depart in four, of course, after the teams are sorted. Others will come with you." A puff of smoke, and the smile melted like afternoon snow. "Information from Suna has been scarce for years, Kushina, ever since Akasuna no Sasori defeated the Yondaime and was acclaimed Godaime. Now, there's a Rokudaime asking for Konoha's assistance and what few sources we have speak of Sasori committing something terrible enough, both the Shinatobe Priests and the Shinobi Corps turned on him."

"Konoha can't afford continue on second-hand information, and we can't pass up this chance to smooth things over with the new leadership and re-establish a working network." His bushy eyebrows furrowed, setting off the titanic lines of his forehead. "It may make the difference between an ally or a kunai in the back in the next War."

Kushina shook her head, lips pressed into a line, parchment cracking under her curling fingers. "Or just give them a zanbatou to slam into our ass the moment we show them our back. Suna has betrayed Konoha twice in the past. Three if you count the whole debacle with the Sandaime Kazekage! You know how the saying goes about shinobi and alliances. This is stupid, and probably a trap. Ask someone else."

She'd bet all of her savings on Jiraiya jumping at the opportunity, but the poignant silence spreading between them told her that option had been already considered and ruled out. She could hazard a couple of reasons, but none that would help her wring herself out of the current predicament.

"Kushina." The Uzumaki closed her eyes and started counting backwards from a hundred. Sarutobi's gentle but steely words reached her when she was at ninety-two. "There's nobody else in your Clan we can trust to do what's right for Konoha and emerge victorious, short of Minato or myself getting involved. Homura's sympathies are well-known, and the Hyuga would never accept, even if they could reliably do it. Moreover, none have your expertise with unstable Jinchuriki."

Kushina rolled her eyes, snorting. "You mean Danzo didn't give you enough blackmail goodies to crack Hiashi's nuts." _'And why waste them anyway, when it's so far easier to_ persuade _a good ol' Uzumaki.'_

"Your clan is in a dire position," he continued and she forced herself to meet his gaze just to glare at him. "Not unlike the Uchiha's over a decade ago, at the time Minato succeeded me. Your Seal Masters are secretive and paranoid, the bread and butter of every shinobi, but not all shinobi command the power to tame gods with ink and blood alone." His voice expanded across the porch, saturating the air like chakra. "Some still remember gratitude and respect sacrifice, but many of your Elders and most accomplished clansmen appear to willingly misinterpret the Memoirs of the Razing, and just what Tobirama-sensei saved you from by giving up his life. Many are displeased; ambition clouds their judgement and sense."

A shudder run down Kushina's spine despite herself, quelling for a moment the smoldering kiln her stomach was quickly becoming. She had read all of Grandma Mito's diaries once, the ones her own mother as a third-born daughter inherited anyway, and her Grandma's accounts of those days had stuck with Kushina since the first time.

The Memoirs in the Hall of Remembrance spoke with more than words, however. Crystallized memories and experiences of the past generations, any pure blooded Uzumaki was always only one drop of blood away from a plunge in the Clan's past.

Many in her Clan considered the destruction of the original Memoirs in Uzu the greatest tragedy of the Razing.

Some disagreed, and said it had been a blessing in disguise. Those were often not Uzumaki, but after witnessing first hand the effect one too many visits to the Memoirs had on her father, Kushina couldn't bring herself to blame them.

She hadn't been to the Hall for years, and yet she could still remember the tumultuous waters of Uzu as if she swam along those shores every day: the rush of the current always one pull away from dragging her into a whirlpool, the saline crusted on her skin and itching in the picking winds. The spiraling towers and the day noises of Uzushiogakure were vivid in her mind as well, just a memory away, as if she walked the streets of her Clan ancestral home just to come to the Sarutobi Compound.

The Memoirs left such strong impressions and recollections in the user's mind there was no way she'd ever forget the Razing, even after only witnessing it once, at her coming of age ceremony.

The battalions of Kumo and Kiri shinobi closing, their endless ranks smashing Uzushiogakure's defenses with brute force and titanic Ninjutsu that turned the whirpools against her own people. The massacres in the streets, the pillaging of flesh and secrets, the spires crumbling under the onslaught of the ocean and her clansmen chained in captivity.

And then the Nidaime came.

Kushina shook her head to dispel the lingering visions of another time, steadying herself under Sarutobi's probing gaze.

"They are tired of being 'just another Clan', when their ancestry goes as far back as the Senju's and the Uchiha's, and beyond," Kushina said hollowly. "Big surprise there, since Goro's line ruled over Uzushiogakure for longer than Konoha has been around. Their authoritative bone's been itching for a scratch for a while now."

"You speak of 'them', but you're referring to you Clan. Your line. Your family and uncle."

"This has nothing to do with Naruto or me, Sarutobi!" Kushina spat, and the fire that had threatened to go out under the weight of memories and veiled allusions rekindled. "You know it, Minato knows it. Don't go bundle everyone together with a bunch of ambitious fools on hair color alone."

"I can't afford not to. War is on the horizon," he said with a conviction that had Kushina stop, and listen. "A war worse than any we've fought this far, and anything less of absolute loyalty is not enough. Twice so, from a Clan as powerful as yours. Minato's judgement in the matter cannot be objective, he holds you two too dear, so he delegated to me."

"You've held yourself admirably in these past few years," Sarutobi continued, but Kushina didn't let the naked honesty in his voice shock her. "You raised Naruto to be a fine young man, and a good shinobi in the making. You kept faith to your word and stepped aside when you could have plunged Konoha into a bloodbath, or worse. For that, you have my thanks." The short bow he gave her did nothing to soften the impact of the next words. "Now, however, I must ask you to prove your loyalty again. We can't trust anyone else with this."

Kushina sighed, bile a vile, familiar pang at the back of her throat, and when her thoughts turned unerringly to Naruto she knew Sarutobi had her by the throat. Such was often the case with the former Hokage, but one of his greater redeeming qualities, after an entire life making such decisions daily, was that rarely and almost with restraint did he choose to squeeze.

She wanted to flip him the bird and tell him where to shove the royal missive and the nearly suicidal mission they were saddling her with. She really wanted to. Either that, or go to Minato and enjoy watching him squirm, but that would only cause more trouble down the line for a moment of vindication.

For twelve years now, ever since Naruto came screaming into the world, her choices had no longer been only her own.

 _'A shinobi must endure. A mother, just more so.'_

"Then out with it, Old Man. Who's coming with me?"

* * *

On the first day of the Genin Exams, Obito gathered the class and welcomed them by announcing he was stepping down from his role as their sensei and motivator.

To Naruto's surprise, the sighs of relief were a scarce minority. Then again, for many it would have certainly been more significant an announcement ,had it come halfway through the academy, a couple of years or so before, and not three days from Graduation.

Naruto was fairly sure Obito was fucking with them again.

"Good luck with my replacement, shrimps!"

A forest of red flags sprung up at the familiar joviality, but the Uchiha had stepped away into a shunshin, leaving them alone with said replacement, who swung the door leading into the exam room open as if cued in.

Naruto felt extremely validated. ' _Yep. Definitely fucking with us.'_

A gangly man of few, pointed words, to the aspirant Genins the black shades of Yamashiro Aoba could only conceal the sharp look of a mind attuned to the Slavedriver's. Maybe an apprentice or, Gods-forbid, a fellow student.

The class proceeded to take the first day's theoretical tests while struggling under justifiable apprehension of the unknown horrors the Tokubetsu Jonin could spring on them. Not even Iruka's tacit encouragement from the lines of the Chunin proctors could start to dispel the foreboding aura of anxious anticipation that literally circled on black wings above their head.

Naruto was sure it was all an intimidation tactic, from the muted crows flapping above and landing regularly on the desks to the probably redundant proctors walking up and down the rows of desk, eyes out for signs of cheating. Either that, or some advanced genjutsu nobody managed to dispel. That knowledge didn't make it any less effective though.

That night ,at home, dinner was an awkward affair, in that there was little of the usual rambunctious chatter that accompanied nearly every meal at the Uzumaki's table. Naruto operated on frayed nerves, hearing the ruffling of crow feathers in every moment of silence, and kaasan was mostly quiet herself after they reviewed the questionnaire together, brooding over some matter or another as they ate the most restrained victory ramen in memory.

She disappeared into her study shortly after, and the rustle and ruffle of scrolls continued long into the night as Naruto practiced.

The second day came and went with only the slightest glimpses of crows, much to his relief. An unending slew of tests and examinations had Naruto cavort up and down the academy with his test group, which included both Karin and Sasuke. He barely caught glimpses of his other friends throughout the day, but he was fairly confident he'd see all of them the next day anyway, so he focused on his own performances.

Naruto's medical was a formality the instructors still insisted he had to undergo - didn't they read his file? He'd never fallen sick in his life, not once! An hour in the training range came after that, and the end of it had Naruto's shoulders sore and his fingers aching, but earned him his bukijutsu qualification.

The Chakra Control test was taken outdoors in a clear January afternoon. It started with Naruto fist pumping the air after a nice little stroll and some acrobatics up and down a tree, but then his enthusiasm was quenched by a less than flattering dash across the heated training pond. His right ankle splashed under when the proctor infused the water with Suiton chakra to create rippling waves and clashing currents he didn't compensate for quickly enough. The Chunin had the galls to look all innocent too when Naruto glared at him.

After that, he started to seriously wonder if Obito's Bastard-ism wasn't really contagious, and what that spelled for his own future after so many hours spent with the Uchiha.

Karma was restored, however, when he got one up on the humorous examiner and the rest of the committee a couple of hours later.

"Uzumaki Naruto, step forward for the Ninjutsu test."

Naruto complied and crossed into the test area, leaving the double doors behind him open as the teme had. The room looked nothing like a classroom did: the rows of desk were replaced by a cordoned stretch of ground and several chakra hardened plates for jutsu demonstration, while the committee looked on from a large dais on the side. Naruto recognized Iruka, Mizuki and Aoba among the examiners, while the others were faces he couldn't put a name on. Probably teachers from different years then, drafted in for the duration of the Exams.

The Uzumaki vaulted over the perimeter, then walked around the wide patch of blackened ground still sizzling and smoking from Sasuke's demonstration. The teme had produced the largest fireball Naruto could remember and went further by keeping the house-sized globe of red-white flames churning in front of him rather than sending it rocketing towards some poor bastard of a dummy.

The instructors had looked positively impressed, but - Naruto checked again over his shoulder, just to be sure his eyes weren't acting up - the trademark teme-smugness was still on holiday. His Uchiha aloofness, on the other hand, was out in spades, together with something else Naruto couldn't describe but had taken root over every action of the teme for the past few months.

Ever since the night of his birthday, when Itachi almost burned the whole Uchiha Clan to ashes.

Not that he missed being addressed as 'dobe' every step of the way, because he didn't. Believe it!

' _Taking a page from Shika… troublesome.'_ But it was his turn to impress, and the teme could wait and learn a few things.

 _Henge_ was a cakewalk, and one Naruto aced by turning into carbon copies every single member of the commission, one after the other, and replaying the mannerisms and ticks of those he knew best: from Mizuki's relaxed gait and teeth-rattling leaves munching to Iruka's vein-popping glare and extensive gesticulation, to Aoba's amused chuckles that barely moved a muscle on his face and the composed, predatory stride he'd demonstrated during the theory test. He was rather proud of getting the chief examiner down as well as he did in just an evening.

Mizuki started coughing halfway through the Iruka's mimicking, much to the original's exasperation.

"That'll be enough, Naruto. Excellent Henge, as usual. You still have Kawarimi, a Bunshin and the personal jutsu, so get on with it."

Falling off the practice tree time and time and _time_ again had given Naruto plenty of chances to practice his _Kawarimi_ , but not nearly enough to attempt a seal less one. When it came to the Bunshin, however, Iruka's expression morphed from exasperation to one of mild concern.

"Alright Naruto. Remember: a stable clone is enough."

Naruto's eyebrow twitched in irritation, but he pushed the feeling to the side. Iruka only meant well and Naruto begrudgingly admitted that his Bunshins, even with the boost to his control gained by practicing tree and water walking to exhaustion, were rarely on the good side of a sickly blob. Too much chakra, everyone told him, for a jutsu that barely required any.

Sakura and Shika could produce Bunshins non-stop for entire minutes, as could nearly everyone in his class. Even Karin was among their number, as she effortlessly compensated her own deep Uzumaki reserves with some innate chakra control exercises relying on her Adamantine Chains, and then some. Naruto, however, had never been able to materialize those and if kaasan was right, likely never would.

It had happened, once or twice during practice and more often after he got the handle on water-walking, that a few standard clones would remain stable long enough to count for a pass, but in those occasions Naruto had created a dozen or so at a time. And the exam's request stated explicitly he had to create _a_ Bunshin. As in one, singular. No loophole to exploit there.

Naruto winked at Iruka, then grinned cheekily at the proctor for the water-walking exercise.

From his weapon pouch the Uzumaki produced a kunai, which he proceeded to throw a few feet in front of him. Then he clapped his hands in the tairitsu no in.

" _Fuin: Bunshin."_

The seal tag around the kunai ignited with chakra, then hissed and smoke enveloped it, expanding upwards in white billows. A moment later, a second Naruto was standing there in his academy uniform, grinning smugly.

The looks on the examiners' faces were priceless and worth all the time spent slaving on Great-Grandma Mito's chicken scrawl. In that moment Naruto really envied the teme's cheat-eye.

Iruka was the first to compose himself, but there was no mistaking his sigh of in relief. "For a moment there I thought you'd pull out… Never mind. Excellent job Naruto, and I think that counts for the personal jutsu as well."

"Does it count as a clone?" Mizuki asked, peering at the second Naruto. Both redheads shot him an annoyed look, and the Chunin chuckled, raising his hands in mock surrender. "Heh, Naruto, I'm just asking. Usually students who want to show off here exploit the Bunshin-loophole with a Mizu Bunshin or a Tsuchi Bunshin. Never seen one of these from the other Uzumaki… whatcha call it, Fuin Bunshin?"

Naruto nodded, keeping to himself that a simple _Kai_ would have had the same result, but not nearly the same dramatic effect.

"Yep. It's got a transformation array that uses the kunai and a bit of my blood as a focus to shape the chakra construct," Naruto explained, voice dripping with excitement. "I've worked in a couple of stability seals into the matrix too, so he shouldn't dispel with a single hit."

And then he cuffed his double with a loud smack. "Hey!"

The original rolled his eyes. "Oh shut up, it's not like you can feel pain. See?" His grin could have dazzled blind men back into the realm of sight. To say that he was proud of his work, because it was _his_ work, would be down playing it: sure, kaasan had overseen while he integrated the stability seals into the array to stop him from accidentally blowing himself up.

She'd also told him the Clan Archives likely had several scrolls on the matter, and probably a few sample designs as well, but he'd been unmoved: where was the challenge in just copying another's seal for his exam? It had taken him a while, but had done everything on his own, every step of the way from planning to execution to testing!

 _'Eat this, jutsu-recycling teme!'_

Mizuki and Iruka exchanged a look, but it was Aoba who voiced the question shared by many in the committee, leaning forward on his elbows and adjusting his shades.

"Can it use jutsu independently?"

Naruto was abruptly shaken out of his mental reverie, but recovered quickly and rubbed his chin. Could it? He'd been too taken with getting the seal to work on his own to contemplate that. "Well, he should," he concluded with a shrug. "I've put quite a bit of chakra into him, and it's not like he can't access it. I think. Hey, soldier, try and Henge into Iruka-sensei."

Sure enough, the clone went through the necessary hand seals and a puff of smoke later Iruka was staring again at a perfect copy of himself, scar and all, just as good as Naruto's had been. Then he rolled his eyes as Naruto high-fived it.

"How long can you maintain it?" Aoba continued as he stepped around the examiners' dais and studied the clone. "With and without the Henge."

Naruto scratched the back of his head, actually quite pleased but caught a bit off guard by the sudden interest. "I put enough chakra into the seal for four hours, probably four and a half couting my control, but adding the drain from the henge…" His face scrunched up as he did the math in his head. "A hour and a half? Yeah, maybe closer to two."

"Impressive."

Naruto couldn't point a finger at it, but Aoba's praise sent a chill running down his spine.

* * *

On the second night of the Genin Exams, sleep became a commodity of the lucky and the dead. Naruto didn't get a slick of it.

The ginormous fireball descending from the sky and smashing into the forest outside Konoha's walls made sure the entire Village was awake and at arms.

The night burned once more on the other side of his home's wards, but it wasn't like the black pillar of dark fire dominating over the teme's Compound that awoke him just months before. The glow, tingeing the sky orange and red, was not that dissimilar from a campfire's, just that much bigger; more importantly, it didn't strike his heart with the shadow of something _else_ , something insurmountable that wasn't meant to be.

The forest kept burning until the early hours of the morning, long enough for Naruto's sense of accomplishment at his seal to dry up and crumble under the rumble of the titanic masses of water and earth moving under the direction of shinobi - real, strong shinobi, unlike him - to quench and suffocate the flames.

Dawn came, and with it kaasan returned, her battle kit covered in soot but otherwise unarmed.

"I see you're already learning how to slack off," kaasan said, dropping on a chair and watching Naruto's fuin bunshin fix breakfast while the original stared up at her from the kitchen table, head resting on his crossed arms. "You've been up all night?" Naruto nodded, and kaasan sighed, shrugged off her Jonin jacket and plopped on the chair beside his, grinning. "So nice of you to give your classmates a running chance at the conditioning. Now, got any progress done on your graduation present?"

Naruto perked up, stifling a yawn with a fist, though inwardly he was grinning back, and pointed at the four large storage scrolls heaped against the couch. A tool pouch rested precariously over the arm, bulging with kunai.

"Done and done." He glanced at her sideways. "Say, kaasan -"

She shook her head at him, an hand touching his wrist. "It wasn't Itachi." Then her eyes were glittering, a dreamy expression stealing away over her tired face as it did a full one-hundred degrees. "Ah, this is going to be so cool!"

Naruto swallowed his other questions about fireballs from the sky, knowing there and then that kaasan wouldn't, or couldn't, answer them without breaking some ranking order way above his paygrade, which was pretty much non-existent at the moment.

He chose to enjoy his breakfast with kaasan instead, and he did, even when his bunshin run out of chakra halfway through and he ended up not slacking off so much.

…

The training ground was alive with the sounds of combat. Grunts and whacks, slaps and thuds, the Chunin proctors for the Taijutsu test met one student after another, driving them hard and driving them fast until the timer was up and match called off.

Naruto sat cross-legged beside Sakura, looking on as Shikamaru went at it with one of the proctors. Or rather, as the proctor danced circles around the Nara, who put up a minimal effort to dodge, block and deflect, but rarely retaliated beyond some testing punches before clamming up in defense.

Naruto's eyebrows twitched in irritation until he feared he was developing a tick as the display of laziness applied to faux combat progressed. The proctor willingly left openings that went ignored by the Nara, time and time and time again, until the proctor's own irritation got the best of her.

Five seconds later, Shikamaru was groaning in the dirt, one hand to his gut, and the proctor towered over him, disappointment coloring her face.

"That was depressing," she announced, and Naruto easily heard and agreed with her, shutting out the rest of cacophony.

Shikamaru grumbled, picking himself up, then tilted his head at the alarm clock on display on a nearby log.

"Yeah," he drawled," but that says it's been three minutes. I pass, I guess?"

The proctor rolled her eyes, then offered him a hand up. "You guess right. But with an attitude like that -"

"I'll get killed sooner or later. I know, I know." The Nara patted himself, then shrugged. "Heard it all already… what a drag."

Naruto watched Shikamaru plod away from the ring and waved him over, but the Nara pointed at the shower building, to which Naruto shrugged.

 _'What's his deal? I get he's lazy, but he could have ended that match much more quickly. I know he has the skill for it.'_

Another name was called by the female proctor and Naruto turned to Sakura. She beat him to the punch though.

"Hey, Naruto, do you know what happened last night?" She glanced at him briefly, then went back to observe the matches, her thumb tormenting the skin on her other fingers.

Naruto almost grinned at her nervous tick. _'Trust Sakura-chan to be nervous about something like this. She's probably trying and calculating who she'll end up facing.'_

"You mean the fireball?"

The pinkette rolled her eyes. "Of course I mean the fireball." She turned fully to him then, locking him with piercing green eyes. "Did you notice Yakumo's not here?"

Naruto's eyebrows inched up his forehead, and he quickly looked around. "She's probably in another test group, you know."

Sakura shook her head. "I've asked around during lunch break. Nobody's seen her all day. And, well - " She hit her lower lip. "Her Clan's compound should be where the fireball hit, remember?"

Naruto rubbed his chin. He did recall from Iruka's lectures that the Kurama Clan's Compound was one of the few outside Konoha's walls and that it had taken a hit during the Kyuuby's attack twelve years before. But the exact location, that had probably been covered in one of the geography lessons, and working on seals until late at night exacted a toll in sleep hours that needed to be paid somehow.

"It was there then?" Naruto whispered, and something cold slipped into his gut. He didn't know Yakumo well, not any more than most he'd teamed up with over the years, but she'd been on his team during his first day at the Academy. Shino and her. That had to amount for something.

"… so I wondered if your mother told you anything." Sakura was speaking, and Naruto noticed the darker circles under her eyes. Be figured nearly everyone had a pair that day. "My mom and dad knew nothing, but they're only Genin."

Naruto nodded, then leaned in and whispered, "Yep, she was out all night, but she didn't tell me anything about Yakumo and her Clan." Sakura's expression fell, but Naruto continued. "No need to worry, Sakura-chan. If that's where her Compound is, then she's probably at the hospital. I'm sure she's alright."

"Uchiha Sasuke, step forward!"

Sakura's head whipped away at Mizuki's call, and Naruto was even glad for that for a long moment as he dropped his reassuring grin. His mind replayed the scenes from the night before, the fireball and the flames he could see from home engulfing the forest, and he was reminded of Momoko-chan.

 _'No, that's completely different. Yakumo is alright, and if she's not, she will be soon.'_

' _Yeah, like Momoko-chan was?'_

Naruto breathed in, breathed out, and forced himself to look up, past Sakura's bewitched stare and to the one ring the teme was stepping into for his Taijutsu evaluation. Opposite to him, Mizuki was popping a few joints, but the Chunin who had been Obito's second in command in the sparring arena showed precious few signs of weariness.

"Alright, Sasuke-kun," Mizuki taunted, dropping into a defensive stance _. 'He intends to wait for him, lure him out of the Interceptor Fist.'_ "Show me what you can do."

Old Sasuke would have smirked, settled for the Interceptor Fist anyway and baited Mizuki back, complete with meaningful and mocking glances at the ticking clock. Old Sasuke sure enough wouldn't have broken into a charge and… disappeared?

Sakura gasped. Naruto's eyes went as wide as miso bowls. _'What does it I don't even -'_

Mizuki hesitated, surprise getting the best of him, and barely dodged a roundhouse high-kick to his neck when Sasuke materialized behind and above him. The Chunin ducked and made space, but Sasuke pressed on. The Uchiha dropped low with another burst of speed that had him a blur to Naruto's eyes, then swept at Mizuki's legs. The Chunin hopped over it, then folded over the follow-up kick impacting fast and hard into his side.

"Is that -?" Naruto's question remained hanging as Sasuke, eyes flashing crimson, disappeared in another burst of speed, reappearing inside Mizuki's guard and striking twice with his elbows at the Chunin's ribs. Mizuki blocked both and his knee came up on a fast track for Sasuke's gut. It met the Uchiha's foot and he spun, using Mizuki's knee as a platform to land a bone shattering kick to the side of Mizuki's head.

Naruto heard the bones of Mizuki's forearm crack loudly, and so did everyone in the training field. The Chunin slid away, snarling, and this time moved on to the offensive.

Naruto glanced at the alarm ticking away the seconds of Sasuke's test, flabbergasted. Had it really only been twenty seconds?

Mizuki attacked, fists and elbows a blur Sasuke wove into like a dancer, face an expressionless mask of concentration. Mizuki's shin impacted Sasuke's high block, but the Uchiha moved with the strike and added its momentum to his own. Mizuki dodged back and just like that, the tables were turned again.

Sasuke moved on the offensive, slipping past Mizuki's meeting blows and turning their momentum against the Chunin. He was hit a couple of times for all of his mind-numbingly speed and spinning hax-eyes, Naruto was sure of it, but Mizuki was being driven back and back again to the edge of the ring with every exchange.

Then Sasuke back-flipped away from Mizuki's lunge, his feet brushed the packed ground and he disappeared again, only to reappear a moment later with his knee solidly buried into Mizuki's gut.

The Chunin crumpled on the floor like a sack of potatoes, wheezing and puking. Sasuke stood over him, panting, a sheen of sweat coating his brow, but in the awed silence that stole across the training ground at that moment, disappointment was the single emotion Naruto could really make out on his face, coloring his pale skin as he licked his bloodied, busted lip.

Then Aoba was clapping, and the spell was broken. "An excellent performance, Sasuke. To show such proficiency in the Shunshin no Jutsu at your age is almost unheard of."

The Uchiha turned to face the head examiner, and the disappointment burned more fiercely on his face for a moment, before Naruto watched him wrestle it under control with an almost physical struggle. Sasuke exhaled.

"'Almost' is not enough, Aoba-sensei. No one ever became Hokage with 'almost'."

And with that, he walked out of the ring, hands in his pockets and onyx eyes fixed in the distance. The assembled students parted to let him pass undisturbed, hushed murmurs and slacked jaws following him every step of the way as the iryo-nins in attendance busied themselves around the prone, gasping form of Mizuki.

Naruto stared after his friend, inadequacy draping over his shoulders like a cape. He tried to compare what he'd just been witness to with his own past performances during their sparring matches and even the lengthy displays during King of the Hill. The cape only hung heavier on his shoulders.

Beside him, Sakura summed it up in a hoarse whisper, green eyes glued to Sasuke's retreating back. She was far from the only one. but Naruto was still too stunned – by the fight, by the proclamation, by Sasuke himself - to be annoyed by it.

"W-wow."

* * *

Anko glanced at the gear arrayed on her western style bed, then at the cracked full-length mirror in front of her and the pink raw flesh covering several barely-healed burns all over her body, naked but for her pendant.

No. She wasn't having a good day. Scratch that, she was on a roll of bad days.

 _'And it's all Kurenai's fault.'_

Sighing, she spat the stripped dango stick into the overflowing thrash bin in the corner and started getting dressed. The full-body fishnet went over her underclothes, fuck what the dress code for a meeting with the Hokage said. It itched against her healed burns, but Anko soldiered through it.

She may have lost that fucking bet, but she would be damned if that daunted her.

 _'Kurenai must have known, somehow. And Ibiki! Motherfucker, he told her and Asuma! No other way around it.'_

How else could have they known about Ebisu, when she didn't?

Grumbling, she wiggled into an undershirt of mesh armor covering down to her wrists and thighs, the one she saved for full-combat environments. Like that dinner at Ibiki's, or the two weeks long hunting mission she'd returned from a couple of days before.

Mopping up the last of the Akatsuki stragglers fleeing from Ame and Hanzo had been less fun and more of a chore with no Ame hunter-nins butting in to steal her prey, but it had still called for a celebratory round at the Jagged Blade with the usual crew. Or maybe twelve, her memories became fuzzy after a point. Teasing Kurenai was way more fun if they were both drunk anyway.

And hence the origin of all her woes. Almost.

 _'How could I know they'd even_ take my _application seriously_?'

She explored the gash across the shirt's side with her index, frowning at it as if the mesh armor could be intimidated into knitting up, but met little success. Next, she considered the standard flak jacket she'd been issued when she made Chunin, and snorted.

 _'Yeah, as if anyone will ever see me in that stuff again. Thing doesn't even fit me anymore.'_

Her shin guards were still blackened with soot from the night before and she noticed a few new nicks here and there, but a glance at her wrist told her she didn't have the time for a good polish: the Hokage would whine, and then Ibiki would bitch at her about it. Which wouldn't be that bad, even funny, if Ibiki wasn't already bitching up a storm after the previous night's clusterfuck at the Kurama Compound, and would bitch another when he learned in what mess she was about to stick her neck into.

She tied the pieces of armor, soot and all, above her sandals, then did the same with her arm bracers, sturdy light things without all the inscribed decorative shit the Clans usually favored. Her last good skirt was half hidden under the mesh shirt and the belt kept the whole ensemble together, but her coat…

Shaking her head, Anko made a bee-line for the bathroom through the half-open boxes cluttering her apartment, picking up scattered tool pouches along the way. The tap belched brown water that cleared after a few moments, time Anko used to peer at her reflection.

Dark bags rimmed her eyes, her hair was a mopping wet mess from the shower but still singed at the ends and one cheek was pinker than another, courtesy of the fire and rushed medical job. She frowned at it as if it offended her though.

 _'Figures that out of the entire strike team I'm the only one already cleared for duty. Fuck you too Ibiki, you deserve this.'_

Closing the tap, she went back to contemplate the ruined tatters of her coat. Whatever the… _thing_ Kurama Yakumo had become was - and the word _demon_ was already on her lips, so alluring - genjutsu should _not_ become reality. And yet she'd witnesses with her own eyes the Kurama Compound immolated in what, by all rights, should have been a wonky C-Rank Genjutsu from an academy student.

 _"It shouldn't be possible,"_ the voice of reason told her time and again over the years, and once more she found it came up short of reality. Her coat and the massacred half of an ANBU team accounted for that much.

She didn't even want to think what it could have done with the Genjutsu people like Kurenai and Idate threw around like confetti, let alone some of the heavy hitters from ANBU.

 _'Ibiki will figure it out.'_ For the moment, it had to be good enough.

Pushing those thoughts to the back of her mind with the rest of the stuff she'd piled up in her years at T&I, Anko tossed the ruined coat on the trash bin and fished another out from her half-empty cupboard. She was out of the small apartment moments later, a few pulls of wires and a tap of chakra leaving behind enough traps to take down a platoon.

The syrupy taste of her breakfast was still strong and relaxing when she reappeared in the shadow on the Hokage Mountain and stepped into the Jonin Taikijo. The desk clerk nodded at her absently and Anko veered towards the corridors leading to the assembly hall where -

 _'Nope. Won't believe until they tell me. Now, Anko, prioritize: find Asuma and maybe Raido, then feed them their nuts. Possibly with an audience. Definitely with Kurenai present.'_

The corridors she navigated were nearly empty and the kind of plain and clean that meant they didn't see much use, but when they did it was somewhat important - which she supposed also true - though not important enough to warrant any of gaudy decoration that only hurt the eyes. Rarely a call went out at the same time for more than a couple of full teams of Jonin anyway, and the Hokage's office or even the Mission Desk could accommodate double that numbers no problem.

 _'Really, most of the time this place is as dead as the grave. T &I has dark wings more lively.'_

The buzz of scattered chatter announced the double doors and the wide, circular hall long before she crossed the doorstep and stopped, hands on her hips, narrow eyes raking the crowd for her prey. The announcement stage on the other side was empty but for a small gong on a table, and there was no trace of the sitting mats she kind of expected. She didn't care of the prey spotted her before she did however, unlikely as it was: hell, it'd make the hunt that much more invigorating. She needed invigorating after the previous night.

' _Almost seventy people. Is that Kato Shizune? Whatever. Idate, Kurenai, oh there he is, beardy-boy… Wait, what the fuck's going on here?'_

Kurenai met her searching gaze and part of Anko smiled inwardly at her wince, but the rest of her not-inconsiderable - by her own admission - brain power was taken completely with finding an answer and making the math in her head match the numbers before her eyes.

She didn't stop walking. Prey sighted and locked, she prowled around and through a few knots of people until she was face to face with Sarutobi Asuma and Yuhi Kurenai. Her best friend.

Her very dead, very Chunin best friend.

"Nai-chan, Beardy Monkey, so nice to see you," she greeted, and Asuma turned to meet her, crooked cigarette dangling unlit from his lips. But she remained silent, and let said silence do her work for her.

Kurenai, to her credit, raked her over so quickly she couldn't have exploited the opening even if she wanted to. Mock disappointment colored her words.

"Didn't the call say something about decent clothing?"

"I am decent, friend." She let the words hang, her look stating she couldn't speak of what happened the night before, and Kurenai's nod put the matter to rest for the moment. "You, on the other hand… Dressed to impress?"

Anko waggled her eyebrows suggestively and licked her lips, drinking in Kurenai's distress as she huffed and crossed her pale and bare arms over the flak jacket. The intricate battledress of red and white bands, inscribed with hundreds of protective fuin wards, poked out of the standard piece and went down almost to her knee, where full leg guards took up the job. All in all, much more conservative than Anko's. Definitely more expensive.

But Kurenai was Kurenai, and Anko was Anko. Proudly so too.

Asuma chuckled, hands welded into his pockets, and Kurenai glared at him. Too easy, really. She wanted to prod them more, and then tear them both a new one for the whole Ebisu's ploy, but her other concern, huge and molesting her brain, rushed to the fore and Anko dropped her playful smirk.

"Alright, lovebirds. What's up here? Whatcha even doing here, Nai-chan?"

Asuma shrugged for the both of them. "Beats me. But there's as many high Chunin as there are Jonin," he said, then tilted his head at Anko, giving her a wide, warm smile, "or almost-Jonin, but I know you really wanted your own trio of runts to boss around."

' _Oh, you're going to suffer for this, Monkey,'_

Smirking, Anko slithered an aggressive hand over Asuma's bicep, her other one caressing his back in slow circles. She rose on her tiptoes, leaning just enough and just at the right angle into his side, and breathed into his ear.

"Do you know what I really want?"

"Anko!"

Anko broke out laughing at Kurenai's flustered sputtering and she hugged her sides nearly howling when she noted the flush creeping up Asuma's neck, quick as he was to reaffirm his control. She had her audience too, as nearly everyone in the hall turned to look what the ruckus was about, much to Kurenai's embarrassment.

Her stage was stolen right from under her feet moments later, however, when the hollow boom of a gong rolled across the hall and bounced back on the walls, revealing a single figure on the stage where only empty air had been an heartbeat before.

The Hokage had arrived, and silence stole across the hall on the back of half a hundred bows.

* * *

 _AN: Thanks to everyone who supporting this fic, be it a favorite or a review. Although, if you have favorited/followed already, or even if you haven't, consider leaving a few lines in the box below. If you've read over 30,000 words already, you should have a pretty solid opinion of things this far._

 _A special thanks to the guys at DLP for their feedback._


	5. Chapter 5

_So. Huh. Been a while. Right. Have a chapter. Peace._

0 = WutL = 0

Doors cracked open and then shut. Stalking feet echoed like drums: one pair followed lazily behind another in the empty corridors of the Jonin Taikuji, until the building loomed behind their backs, empty for another year or so.

"I need a drink. You need more," Anko declared. "Tag along."

Obito followed her on the roofs, leaving behind a trail of cracked tiles.

The afternoon hurried to an early conclusion by the time the two of them secured a private booth at the Jagged Blade, and the first bottle of sake waited between them.

Let it never be said Anko was one to let alcohol sit idle. And if the speed at which Obito downed his first two cups was any indication at all, maybe she did have a teaching bone or two in her body.

At least he had the good sense to put up a privacy Genjutsu before his mouth started running.

"I can't believe he sealed the Fox into his own son," he growled, glaring into his cup as of the alcohol would spontaneously ignite. Which, what with him being a fellow Katon natural, wasn't that remote a chance. Anko pulled the bottle closer to her. "And I thought I'd seen the worst of him in Wave…"

"Righty. Shut up."

To her dismay, the nickname didn't sway him towards more personal banter, or silent drinking. "Anko, for fuck's sake! Where you in there with me or what?"

"Yeah, I think I was. I kind of remember all those S stamps on the folders." Anko glared at him over the rim of her cup before chugging back the sake. It went down smoother than any medication ever did. And they said she sucked at the Iryo-nin business, ah! "All the more reason to shut your trap, Righty, and drink."

And drink he did, but he talked as well. Way too much. 'For someone so thin, he should be shitfaced already.'

Of course, the Uchiha wasn't even slurring yet. Just her luck. "He was two days old. Two! That's not something any father should do."

Anko shrugged at the empty, idealistic raving, leaning back in her seat. That the mighty and virtuous Hokage would sleep around before tying the knot with a Senju Princess was something she honestly didn't expect, and on another occasion would have found no end of amusement in, S-Rank secret or not.

Being stuck smack in the middle of a potential Clan feud between some of the biggest bitches in town over a child with some real mean shit sealed into his belly, however, didn't really meet her definition of fun. Only the half where some Clannies gutted each other did.

"Maybe. But I don't think he lied when he said Naruto was the only candidate. Senju Nawaki's whole family was killed the night of the attack, bar Tsunade-sama, 'course. And he was the previous container anyway. No other half Senju, half Uzumaki in town that I know of."

"Naruto's not a _container_ ," Obito spat.

"Tone it down, will ya? I'm just saying things as they are. And unlike that other boy, the fake container, at least he grew up with his mom, not among bald monks, ANBU, and with an even bigger target on his back. I'd say he got off pretty well." She tilted back her cup and rolled her eyes. "Recriminating never changed a damn thing. It ain't gonna unseal the Kyuubi from the boy now, will it?"

Half a bottle of sake later and a good dent into the second one, the morose silence was broken again.

"Y'know," Anko offered, propping her elbows on the table and pushing her chest up. A comfortable heat had settled in the pit of her stomach, and she smacked her lips in appreciation. And the Uchiha wasn't that bad looking, missing arm notwithstanding. "You shouldn't accept. The tradition is stupid, you're too involved, and you're missing an arm to boot."

Obito glared back, cup stopping halfway to his mouth. He didn't even glance down at the bounty on display, the boring prude. To top it all off, his obnoxious chatty drunkenness was now at the gloomy, broody stage. It was so Uchiha, Anko wanted to roll her eyes. And so she did.

"And you will?" He sneered. "You don't even want the job. You'll just turn them into deviants and psychos, and then Kushina's going to hang you outside to dry."

Anko cackled. "Better deviant than crippled. You're just gonna die, and then everyone will bitch at me." She pulled a face and downed another cup. "And medics bitching at me are always a Bad Thing."

"You've grown a big head, spending too much time around people gagged and bound." Obito slapped his empty cup on the table and rose to unsteady feet. Anko smirked a challenge up at him as he tossed a handful of ryo to cover his own share.

"Tomorrow at six then. Training Ground 15," she shot at him, licking her lips at the prospect of a challenge. "To shake off some of that Academy rust you've got on you."

Obito's eyes flashed red in the smoky lights of the Jagged Blade, sealing the deal.

0 * WutL * 0

The third and last night of the Genin Exams draped the forced tranquility of military curfew over Konoha, emptying the streets of any and all civilians.

The Military Police watched the walls, patrolled the rope bridges and the streets. Outside the Barriers, ANBU patrols ranged in the forests like they hadn't in years. Eyes darted to the skies without pause, almost expecting more fire to break the bleak dome that settled on Konoha in the afternoon.

To Ibiki Morino, it was nothing more than a charade, a show of strength to mask the crippling ignorance he and his had been tasked to remedy by dawn.

Once the Yamanaka Mind-Walker was carried away screaming and restrained to prevent more self-mutilation, the interrogator studied the bound girl whose thoughts he'd tried to read, with disastrous results. Just an Academy student, not even a Genin, and she was covered in suppression seals on the other side of a cell door in one of the black-ops facilities restricted to S-Rank prisoners, refurnished in a hurry the night before.

As the echo of the Yamanaka's screams faded, Ibiki contemplated his near complete lack of answers, then stopped. In that direction lay only frustration.

The kunai's weight almost didn't register in his hand, but to strike would mean to admit defeat. Ibiki hadn't failed a task since the Kiri Cryptography Squad debacle in the Third War. He had no intention of starting now.

The cell door clicked shut behind him. With a push of chakra, the seals ensuring Kurama Yakumo's silence faded. The girl whimpered blindly, but she didn't try to break from the machinery restraining her. She didn't try, not even once. Her words validated his idea on why.

"Kill it! Help me, please!"

"I can't. I don't think anyone can."

"Then kill us _both_!" she begged. Her voice broke into sniffles a moment later. "Please. I beg you. Make it stop."

"I won't." He settled down and leant forward on the back of the single chair in the room. "Now let me speak to it."

0 * WutL * 0

Across town and several floors above ground, Sakura listened to her parents shout it off behind the closed door of her bedroom. For a moment, only a moment, she wished she had scored just a little bit less in the final test. But the perfectionist in her, that stubborn and proud voice in her head, quashed the doubt. She wouldn't regret a thing: not when it had to concede to the Clan girls in most disciplines for years.

She had studied hard, hours upon hours for over years, until her eyes teared up, staining the pages, and the headaches became a constant fixture, as reliable as sunup and sundown. She took every extra subject she could cram into her schedule and scoured every library her parents' Genin clearance allowed her entrance. Kushina-san and Naruto even gifted her some advanced tomes she clearly shouldn't know of – much less possess - for her last birthdays, anonymous storage scrolls slipped into prankish presents.

And so it was that Sakura aced a test that wasn't meant to be aced, just passed with flying colours. The teachers had taken her to the side, suspecting that she'd cheated, but Kushina-san had taken the incriminating books away, foreseeing the eventuality, and she'd destroyed all copies and notes.

Thus why the offers from half the Divisions - Cryptograhy, R&D, T&I, the names blurred together - in the Shinobi Corps lay scattered on her desk. Scattered and ignored, because they were not from the other half of the Corps, the one she intended to join. The ones her mother cried was going to see her little girl dead in a ditch before she turned fifteen.

Sakura rubbed her reddened eyes and listened until the voices grew hoarse and her ears rang with the same arguments, echoing in circles. Then she picked up the brand new headband by its garish red cloth, tied it around her hair and pushed the door open, head high and completely unapologetic.

0 * WutL * 0

Obito walked out of Konoha General Hospital, where he'd limped into not even a hour before, cradling a collection of bruises, snake bite marks and more than a few loose teeth. More than walk, he jogged, keeping his chakra signature as close to non-existant as he could manage.

Rin was on shift, and she wouldn't like if she learned he got hammered the morning he'd take partial charge of his first team of Genin. Not one bit.

He vowed to light a bunch of incense sticks to the nearest altar first chance he got when he finally cleared the hospital's premise without being spotted or sensed. The vow extended to stepping up his training again as well: Ibiki's pet or not, it wouldn't do to have Mitarashi Anko clear his clock again next time they sparred. He had a reputation to defend, especially with the runt.

He opted to avoid the tree bridges and instead took to the rooftops, paying extra attention not to leave a trail of cracked tiles behind him this time. Customs had already withdrawn the reparation costs from his stipend, likely clued in by Anko. Efficient bastards, those desk Genins. It'd not do to lose more, not with his revenues about to take an all-time low already from lack of high-paying B and A-Ranks.

Obito sighed. Being sensei never made for rich shinobi, or so the saying went.

His feet carried him away from the central districts and from the Academy, where the Award Ceremony for his class would start in less than an hour. Naruto had probably already squirreled into the building to enact the Uzumaki family tradition of pranking the shit out of the committee. The runt probably thought he'd seen the last of him. It was cute of him, in a way.

The small smile on Obito's face morphed into a grimace at the thought of who was waiting for him there. For the third time that morning, he considered turning on his heel and rush to the Academy, to be by the side of a boy he regarded almost as his own son. Orders were orders, however. And these, in a different way than Naruto's plight, were personal too.

Inside his head, the voice that had been smothered by sake the night before raged, but Obito didn't sway from his path. He hated himself for it, but Naruto wasn't his son. It wouldn't be fair to intrude, even if he really, really wanted to, at least for Naruto's sake. He would be there for him after, he told himself as he shunshined from rooftop to rooftop.

Reasoning it out only left a sour taste in his mouth.

The Market District was bustling with activity and smells. Shops were already open or in the process of starting the day. The criers would be soon hard at work. The result, even this early, was a colorful landscape of enticing products, hanging drapes and cutthroat competition to shame many a ANBU killteam. Early clients meandered in front of shop windows or among stalls and carts that offered a hundred and one delicacies. Their fragrance wafted up to awake Obito's empty stomach from its slumber.

The Uchiha veered away, jumping from one platform to another as his mouth watered, then surrendered and bought a takeaway oyakodon bowl from a roving cart. He swallowed the last of the rice and chicken as he reached the smithies road, to the sound of beating hammers and the rich cloud of smelting fires.

The Shiranui Arsenal was a rather smallish shop for such a grandiose name, but even this early in the morning, several shinobis perused its stalls to replenish their stock. Obito took a moment to admire the general quality of the workmanship in exposure, weighing a tanto in a simple but utilitarian sheathe. Indeed, shinobi knew what shinobi liked best. From what Rin told him once, the Shiranui were as often smiths as they donned Konoha's headband. Often times, they did a little bit of both.

A man in his fifties with a rather nasty burn scar crawling up his neck manned the counter. Obito identified him as Genma's father, Shiranui Ujiharu, more by the striking resemblance between the two than the file he'd been shown by the Hokage the previous day.

He bartered on the prices with an easy firm but hand, taking the honored shinobi tradition in stride. More often than not, it ended with both parties chuckling. He was good, no two doubts about it. Most shinobi haggled like fishwives by the end of their first years as Genin, and Obito recognized several Chunins and Jonin waiting in line.

Each transaction that evolved into haggling translated into time wasted, however. Time Obito would rather spend elsewhere, truth be told, but the content of his pocket was too important and personal, in a way, for that. He eyed the grandfather clock on the wall several times as he waited in line. Each time, his eyes then fell on the low door leading into the shop's back courtyard and working area, if his ears didn't betray him.

"Ah, Obito-san," Ujiharu greeted him openly. Obito was taken aback by the familiarity, then recognized the sad note in the man's smile. Right. Tenten had been one of his students too, once. _'Anko must have hit me harder than I realized.'_ "It's a pleasure to have you here. What can I do for you?"

Obito's only hand fished a headband from his pocket and placed it on the counter, Konoha's symbol looking up unapologetically. "I have an offer for your daughter. From the Hokage."

Tenten's face was tanned and caked with soot, her arms toned with wry muscle. The calluses on her hands could easily be from months wielding hammer and prongs or ninja tools. Maybe both: Obito didn't miss how a good chunk of the courtyard was relegated to target practice. It looked freshly used.

"Obito-sensei." She bowed, then sighed. "Sorry to be blunt, but why are you here? Isn't today graduation day?"

' _So she does keep up with the news.'_ "I could ask the same of you, you know." He flashed her a disarming grin. When Slavedriver Obito smiled, pain and suffering would always follow for his students. She shifted in surprise when he didn't bark a punishment at her, almost as if she'd forgotten they were in her home and not at the Academy. "Your place is on the field, Tenten."

He'd put her out of her comfort zone, but her parry dripped bitterness, moping, and self-hate. "My chakra coils are too damaged for that. I didn't have that much chakra to begin with, anyway." She shrugged, looking away. "I'm useless as a shinobi."

"Bullshit. Look at me, girl." He waved the stump of his shoulder at her, but he killed any hint of levity from his voice. "That self-deprecation crap doesn't work with me. Try again when you've lost a limb."

"Is this a competition, sensei?"

"Everything is a competition among shinobi. I figured the Academy taught you that." He shrugged, earning an infuriated look. _'There it is.'_ "So you were dealt a bad hand. You're the only one making a big deal out of it."

Tenten's hand balled into fists, but she didn't look away. She slapped her palms together instead. Obito's Sharingan flared for a moment, highlighting her gathering chakra in a flickering blue haze that thickened around her body. Her face became drawn with pain and effort. Her limbs started to tremble. Sweat poured down her brown, leaving trail marks in the caked soot. Then, as the chakra was about to leave her coils in a basic purifying exercise, the flow went haywire and the it slammed back into her body.

Tenten didn't even cry in pain. She just deflated with a defeated whimper, like a puppet with its strings cut. Obito steadied her, stopping her from crumpling into a heap. It took a long minute of panting, during which Obito had to endure the burning glare of Tenten's eldest brother Kaisen from the forge, before Tenten found the strength to talk coherently.

"I can't even… control it. Every time I try to mold chakra, it ends like this. I'm a deadweight."

"You could have the worst of the damage healed and learn to work with the disability."

Tenten shook her head. "I am… was just a Genin. My insurance doesn't cover that kind of operation and my family, we cannot afford it."

"Then ask for a loan and repay it with mission revenues, a little bit at a time!" He snapped, sharper than he meant too. Tenten winced. "It'll be hard, yes. You'll have to make sacrifices and bleed yourself dry. That's a Tuesday in our line of work."

Tenten looked up at him, disbelieving. He dropped the headband – the same one she'd returned when leaving the Corps - in her lap. He saw the spark of recognition in her eyes. "I'm here on the Hokage's behalf. That'll be good enough a guarantee for any bank for a while. We need every competent Genin in the Corps, and I want you on my team. Yes, my team. Crazy, right? The ball is in your field now. Do you want to be a shinobi, or you'd rather waste away in that forge until you only have regrets? Think well before you answer."

Her answer rang familiar. Near word by word what he told himself every morning in the mirror.

As it turned out, Obito would see Rin today. Too bad Nonou Yakushi would be there as well, to arrange for the future cycles of Tenten's regenerative therapy. As it was, the girl was little better than ballast, but really, that had always been the truth for most Genins, save a few notable and annoying exceptions.

0 * WutL * 0

When that morning kaasan told him to be extra careful, because apparently, the scare she'd given the Academy teachers when she graduated was enough to warrant extra security measures on every graduation ceremony ever since, Naruto didn't expect to be caught with his fingers in the cookie jar by the Hokage himself.

And yet, here he was, Uzumaki Naruto, twelve-year-old Genin-to-be-in-an-hour-or-so, kneeling as he hid the last bunch of the Kage-bushin kunai that, together with the seals applied to the rest of the school, would turn the halls into Ghost Town 2.0 (Naruto and kaasan had agreed to never speak of the first attempt again. Like, ever.)

And there he was. The Yondaime. The Yellow Flash. Iwa's brown-pants nightmare. Twirling one of Naruto's kunai as he crouched not a foot away, an interested look on his face as he studied him.

Naruto stopped. He stared at his hands, then at the Hokage's face. The Hokage arched an eyebrow. Naruto swallowed, then tried to grin.

"Hi, Naruto-kun," the Hokage said, then stopped, as if searching for the right words. "A tricky design you have here. All yours?"

Naruto's pride surged, despite the slight pressure he felt. He nodded. Then remembered he had a tongue, and only after that that the blonde man before him was the supreme military leader of his Village.

"Yeah. All mine. Hokage-sama." He had to stop his hand from smacking him over the head of its own volition.

The Hokage hummed thoughtfully, but it sounded odd to Naruto. A few seconds of silence lengthened into an awkward moment.

Then the Hokage sighed and rubbed the back of his neck. His smile turned strained, but he spoke gently.

"Say, Naruto-kun. Before you go to the ceremony, you and I must discuss some things."

Naruto swallowed again, looking at the last link of his master plan, now laid bare before the Hokage.

Begrudgingly, he swallowed his pride. "I can take this down and put everything back before anyone notices, Hokage-sama."

The Hokage waved a hand, his smiled turning more genuine. "Oh, never mind this. Konoha needs to keep its traditions alive." And with that, he pocketed Naruto's kunai into his haori. "Come now, that class right here will be perfect."

Unlike the auditoriums on the ground floor and below, designed to host a couple hundreds of students at a time, the advanced courses like Sealing, Calculus, Bloodlines & Genetics – Naruto shuddered at the thought of the tome on the topic Sakura-chan showed him once as a threat – or even unspeakable taboos like Kunoichi Training were held in smaller classes on the upper floors where he was now, arrayed more similar to a civilian school's.

The Hokage pushed open the sliding door of the nearest one and waved Naruto forward. The redhead complied, bowing his head, then froze on the threshold.

"Hey, Naruto-kun," kaasan waved. She sat at the teacher's desk, kitted in full gear, pouches filled to the brim with storage scrolls. A few chairs had been arranged around the desk. It took Naruto a moment to realize all windows were shut, but darkness waiting beyond the glass was too encroaching and uniform to be natural.

 _'A form of privacy seal?'_

"It's just a small precaution. Come now, best not keep the Hokage waiting."

Naruto nodded jerkily, his thoughts swimming. What was kaasan doing here? What the Hokage? Why hadn't she told him anything only an hour before? Had she known, or was it a surprise for her too?

He slowly took a seat beside her. Kaasan's hand found his shoulder and squeezed. It was brief, but her hand didn't retreat. He could feel her warmth through his uniform. It relaxed him, somewhat.

The Hokage appropriated the teacher's seat. Now that Naruto peered at him more closely - it was the Hokage! - he looked very tired.

"So," the strongest shinobi to walk the Elemental Countries started, then smiled that strange smile," congratulations on your graduation, Naruto-kun! Here, I wanted to give to you myself, face to face."

The Hokage rummaged into his haori, then Naruto's eyes widened as he produced a folded headband, the cloth a blue so dark, it was almost black. The cloth was old too, frayed a bit around the metal to show the protective weave beneath.

"Matches your jacket too." The Hokage chuckled. "Take it. It's yours. You've earned it."

Naruto touched the headband, almost hesitant, then snatched it away, splaying the two ends across his palms, feeling the thick texture made rough by time on his bare skin.

"You can't put it on until the ceremony's over, though. Just another tradition to respect."

Naruto nodded. Then kaasan spoke for the first time.

"Naruto, don't be a bumpkin."

The younger redhead almost jumped from his seat. "Ah, right. Sorry, I'm – Never mind, heh." He almost scratched the back of his head, then controlled the mutinous limb halfway there. He bowed his head, instead. Kaasan rolled her eyes. "Thank you, Hokage-sama." Then, after a moment, "Is that all?"

"Naruto…"

The Hokage's smile cracked, then vanished, leaving behind the face of a tired leader. At least, how Naruto imagined a tired leader would look.

"No, it's not all, I'm afraid." The Hokage rubbed his face and exchanged a silent look with kaasan. She didn't blink or speak, but from the way they held each other's gaze, Naruto could tell it was almost as if they were speaking out loud. The Hokage's last name was Namikaze, but the blonde hair in the history books always reminded him of Ino and the Yamanaka. Maybe he knew their secret jutsu for mind reading and speaking?

He wouldn't learn it that day. Kaasan squeezed his shoulder, longer this time, but then the Hokage was speaking again.

"Tell me, Naruto-kun. What do you know of the Kyuubi's Attack on October 10th?"

Naruto was taken aback by the random question, out of the blue like that. Still, this was his Hokage, weirdo that he may have turned out to be. Naruto called up Iruka-sensei's lessons on Konoha's recent history, and the flat voice the teacher used to describe the events. As the worst disaster since the end of the Third War, Iruka-sensei had been quite pedantic on the topic, but those lessons lacked his usual passion and investment.

"Only what Iruka-sensei taught us, Hokage-sama. An enemy party infiltrated Konoha, kidnapped the previous Jinchuriki, Nawaki Senju, and… killed his wife and children." Images of Momoko-chan flashed unbidden before his eyes, but Naruto had learned long ago to keep his memories in check. He still clenched a fist under the desk, knuckled popping quietly. "They then proceeded to break the seal, extract the Biju and unleash it on the Village, killing many among the shinobi and civilians both. In the end, it was by the concerted effort of yourself, Sandaime-same, Jiraiya-kyo – Jiraiya and Tsunade of the Sannin, and the Uzumaki and Senju Clans that the beast was subjugated and sealed in an orphan boy. All the attackers were killed during the battle."

Naruto paused for breath, inwardly berating himself for almost slipping, but the Hokage only nodded in acknowledgment. Kaasan was very still, but she offered him a small, encouraging smile when he looked her way.

"Very good. So, the boy, the Jinchuuriki. What do you know of him?"

Naruto thought hard, then shrugged.

"Not much. Iruka-sensei said his name is Sora, but that he doesn't live in the Village. The Fire Monks brought him up, and he never became a shinobi. He should be about my age, right?"

"Indeed, only a few months older," the Hokage replied evenly. He looked over Naruto's shoulder at kaasan, and something hardened in his blue eyes.

"Naruto-kun, what I'm about to tell you goes beyond the S-rank secret. This means that you cannot speak of it to anyone outside this room, and only when either of us is absolutely sure, one-hundred-percent, that the area is safe. Do you understand me? Anyone you'd speak of this without my approval, I'll be forced to kill. For Konoha's safety and yours."

Naruto stared, caught completely flat-footed once more by the Hokage's sudden switch in tone and demeanor. He glanced at kaasan, and his worry only grew in spades. She was trying to keep the smile on her face, to comfort and reassure him, but it was slipping, until she just let it fall. Her eyes grew rheumy for a moment, but the sheen was blinked away so quickly and replaced by determination, Naruto was half-sure he'd imagined it.

"It's alright, Naruto-kun."

Naruto nodded, almost by reflex. And then the Hokage started to talk.

"Kiji Sora is not the Jinchuuriki of the Kyuubi, Naruto-kun. After the Biju was sealed that night, much of its residual yokai was gathered by the Sannin Tsunade, then sealed into him to provide Konoha's enemies with a plausible cover story, and divert attention from the real host."

Naruto blinked, flabbergasted. If he was honest, he felt like much of what was being said just flew over his head. Why tell him this? Why was the Hokage, of all people, telling him, barely an Academy-graduate, possibly the greatest secret of the Village? Why wasn't kaasan saying anything?"

His tongue was trying to tie itself into knots, as were his vocal cords. "O-ok, yes. No, wait. Sorry, Hokage-sama, but why are you telling me this? I mean, I'm just a Genin."

Kaasan chuckled, but it sounded forced. "Don't get cocky, Naruto-kun. You haven't tied on your headband yet."

The Hokage sighed wearily. "No, you're not just a Genin." He stopped then, and Naruto realized kaasan was glaring daggers, kunai and all sorts of pointy ninja tool at him. At the Hokage. The hand glued to his shoulder tensed, as if she was ready to spring into combat. "Not like that, Kushina. But he has to be aware."

"He's Naruto. My son! Not some kind of –"

"I never said that, you crazy woman!" If Angry-Kaasan was reason enough to bolt out of the room, the Hokage shooting to his feet, eyes alive like lightning, made Naruto regret he didn't know the Hide-like-a-Mole Technique. "Don't make this harder than it already is!"

Kaasan opened her mouth to answer, then she refrained, biting down on the inside of her cheek. It had been years, since one particularly awkward visit by a drunk Jiraiya-kyofu and Tsunade-baba, since Naruto saw his kaasan do that.

Naruto had to stop himself from squirming in his chair. Genins didn't squirm. Genins were soldiers for their Village. He remained still, instead, eyes just above the Hokage' shoulder as the leader composed himself and sat again, hands clasped before him.

"There are reasons why Kiji Sora or another orphan wasn't chosen to be the Jinchuuriki," the Hokage said, somber again. "You see, Naruto-kun, unlike the other Biju, the Kyuubi's presence and power are too much for a normal person to host. Even powerful Shinobi would be hard-pressed to contain it for longer than a month, and that's accounting for the best Uzumaki seals and constant monitoring." The Hokage pointed a self-deprecating finger at himself. "I would last a few months, at best. Maybe a year."

"Then it takes a special kind of host? Why not an object, like a pot?" Naruto asked, trying to orient himself in the strange, dark waters he'd been dropped into.

"It'd last even less, and that's not accounting that a pot is much more fragile than a shinobi. After Konoha was founded, Shodai-sama tried it, several times. The Kyuubi is called the Calamity That Walks for a reason, however. None of the solutions proved effective in the long term. Finally, Shodai-sama sealed the Biju into himself, and passed the Hokage hat to the Nidaime, his brother."

"So Shodai-sama was it? The right host?"

"Not exactly." Naruto's head whipped around. Kaasan's expression was strange, but she reached out and ruffled his hair nonetheless. Naruto, despite the state-crucial secrets behind disclosed to him by the Hokage himself, and precisely for that reason, made a face, embarrassed. "The Shodai was extremely powerful. The most powerful shinobi in history, right. And yet, for all his might, for all his prowess in the Mokuton, even he couldn't contain the Kyuubi forever. He managed to last for years, through the end of the First War and well into the Second. Then Uzu was attacked, and our Clan came to Konoha."

Naruto remembered well that part of history. "We owe them everything," kaasan used to say when he narrated him bed stories on the Shodai and the Nidaime.

"By then, you must understand the Shodai was at his limit, Naruto-kun. Fortunately, the best Sealers in the world had just become Konoha citizens, so your great-grandma Mito and the best minds of both Villages doubled down to design new seals and find a solution."

"To explain the chakra theory behind how genetics modify a shinobi coils and how that translates to chakra natures would take too long, and it is beyond the point," the Hokage cut in quickly. Naruto's head whipped around again. Great-grandma Mito's mention was a surprise, but it probably shouldn't have been. Still, with all the head-turning he was doing, he was starting to feel like a ping-pong ball. His thoughts weren't much more stable. "It's enough to say that when Shodai-sama died, Mito-sama volunteered as the next jailor… and as a test-subject for the new Seal designs. Mito-sama was a tremendously powerful shinobi herself, and the new Seal was as youkai-proof and stable as any of the Uzumaki masterworks."

Naruto swallowed, dread forming a little ball in his stomach as he imagined grandma Mito struggle with something unimaginably evil as the Kyuubi no Kitsune ought to be.

"… But it wasn't enough?"

The Hokage tilted his head to the side. "It was a close thing. In fact, the ideal solution was finally found only a few years later, but it took far longer to implement it. Both the Uzumaki and the Senju lines had proven highly resistant to both the youkai's corrosive power, and the Kyuubi's influence, so –"

"- Tsunade-baba!" Naruto almost jumped out of his chair, kept there only by kaasan's stiffening grip. "Her mom was grandma Hama's older sister, right?!"

Kaasan cackled. "Tsunade-hime is going to spank your ass crimson and black if she ever learns you called her that in front of the Hokage." All blood fled Naruto's face, eager to abandon the doomed body, but then the Hokage chuckled too, and he was at a loss for words again. "But that's right. Tsunade-hime's mom was an Uzumaki, and her father a Senju, the Shodai's second-born."

"And that's how we get to Nawaki," the Hokage concluded, "the first Jinchuuriki born from both lines."

Naruto frowned at that, scratching his cheek. His eyes wandered as his mind circled the issue, but the blackness swallowing the windows made his skin crawl. He focused on the Hokage instead.

"Something bothers you, Naruto-kun?" The Hokage asked, leaning forward.

"Yeah. Sorry. I mean, yes, Hokage-sama. If the perfect host is someone born from an Uzumaki and a Senju, why wasn't Tsunade-b-hime the Jinchuuriki? Nawaki was a lot younger than her, right?"

"Not by that much. Also, the Seal is prone to weaken during childbirth, and Sandaime-sama at the time didn't want to hamstring his student." Naruto made a disgusted face. Kaasan actually snorted, for some reason. The Hokage gave her a look that set the hair on Naruto's neck on edge.

"Anyway," he continued, voice controlled. "Nawaki's son was meant to take his place, when the time came. Alas, it wasn't meant to be. The Attacker knew what he was doing when he killed the entire family, and indeed, if not for a… lucky coincidence... that night there wouldn't have been a proper host for the Kyuubi, and Konoha no longer has the Shodai's power to suppress the Biju time and again without consequences."

"A coincidence?"

Kaasan shook her head, her red ponytail lashing through the air like a whip. "You can call it that, I suppose. In a very rude, very callous way." The Hokage quickly lifted both palms in a pacifying sign, but kaasan was already crouching in front of Naruto, at eye level with him. Her hands cocooned around his, and she rubbed the back of his hands with her thumb.

"I never told you about your father, Naruto-kun."

The Hokage exhaled, but Naruto was too worried about that small ball of dread in his stomach uncoiling and expanding to notice.

"… You said you'd tell me when I was old enough." 'When I was ready.'

"Yeah, I said that. You're about to become a Genin now, Naruto-kun. That means that, for the law, you're an adult, with all rights and responsibilities an adult has."

"Does that –"

"No, you cannot go drinking with Jiraiya-kyofu when he comes visiting. And especially not with Tsunade-hime. Not until you make Chunin."

Kaasan laughed at Naruto's pout, but both were short-lived and too stressed. Kaasan didn't speak for a few moments, moments that expectation, worry, and fear made seem like an eternity to Naruto's mind. There was a sheen to her eyes. This time, when she blinked, it didn't go away.

"Your father… he wasn't a Senju, at least not in name, but he had their blood. More importantly, he had that… quirk, you can call it, it's complicated… ok, he had the same genetic mutation that's part of what makes some Senju able to control the Mokuton. That, and the Uzumaki's constitution are the two pieces necessary for the host of the Kyuubi."

Naruto hadn't attended a single lesson of the Genetics class. That was the kind of advanced stuff Sakura loved to cram her schedule full with. Her kind of thing. Naruto's were his Seals. But he'd helped her repeat sometimes, just like she helped him when he needed to put order into the jungle of notions, correlations, causes and consequences he was studying and trying to assimilate. Just like he helped her with her Seals, it was inevitable he'd pick up a few notions from her, here and there.

The last piece of the puzzle fell into place and it was like someone had taken a sledgehammer to his brain, then tossed the pieces into a blender and had the blades spin until the mechanism broke for good.

Naruto's breath hitched painfully. His chest heaved. He tried to voice his thoughts, but he didn't really know them. Everything between his ears was a dull, droning buzz. Yet, it seemed he'd strung a few words together, because kaasan was nodding. Her cheeks were glistening too. Tears.

He never liked it when kaasan cried.

He didn't realize he was standing until kaasan engulfed him into a bear hug, the crushing kind she often gave him after they moved into the Flower District. After Momoko-chan died, when the nukenins in black tried to kidnap him because –

"It wasn't your fault, Naruto-kun. It was never your fault."

Oh. The Hokage was standing beside him. He hadn't felt his hand on his shoulder until now. It was bigger than kaasan's. Not nearly as warm, but it was steady, almost heady touch. Kaasan had stopped talking, but she was still holding onto him – or maybe holding him up? Naruto couldn't quite feel his legs. Anyway, it was hard to crane his head to look at the man, the Hokage, properly in the face.

"Momoko didn't die because of you," he said, voice brimming with a confidence that carried past the havoc in Naruto's head, bringing a light of clarity, and so many questions. How could he say that? What did he know? Hadn't the nukenins tried to kidnap him because he – because he was - "Nobody died because of you. You are not the Kyuubi. You're its jailor, and every day you protect every person in this Village from a nightmare than words cannot even begin to describe."

Kaasan was nodding against his shoulder, then she was looking him straight in the eyes. She was still crying, but she was smiling through them. It was a true smile, too, one of those beautiful ones that lit up her entire face.

"You are a hero, Naruto-kun. And you are Naruto, not the Kyuubi, not the Seal that contains it. Never think for a moment that's not the truth." She kissed his forehead, then his cheeks, just under his eyes. Only then did Naruto realize he was crying too. "You're my son, and I will always love you."

The Hokage squeezed his shoulder. They stood there for a long moment, the three of them, alone and immobile in the empty classroom. Then the Hokage's hand left his shoulder, the tips of his fingers lingering for only a moment against his uniform. Naruto found himself missing that hand's presence, the contact, even the little warmth it carried.

"Thank you," the man whispered in a voice that Naruto didn't quite recognize. Then the moment passed, and it was the Hokage who spoke again.

"I'll be outside when you're ready, if you have other questions. Take your time. Both of you."

And in the pause between two heartbeats, the Hokage was gone.

0 = WutL = 0

 _AN: My thanks to anyone who read, favorited, followed, reviewed and added this story to their community. Sorry for the long delay, the muse was on other shores. She's kind of a whore, goes where she's shown the most love._ _ **Don't forget to**_ _ **review, only more so if you've got critical feedback, doubts, opinions, ideas, and whatnot.**_

 _Until next time,_

 _Alexeij_


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